Annoying at the very least. If you do a Google search for “coolest websites” you find a site that has a compendium of book reviews, another that’s a museum of online museums

Here’s a quickie for today - as the Digital Grandparent at Demystifying Digital, I gathered a bunch of my favorites for kids and posted them to my blog over there. Go take a look at fun places to visit on the Web with kids - free and pretty safe, too.

OK, now I’ve seen it all…here’s a Harry Potter, J.K. Rawling post from E Online that just cracked me up, and I’m not sure why it did. An entire article about Dumbledore being queer. Here’s my take : why do we care? What does that have to do with Harry Potter and all the magic and the story line? Does that mean Harry Potter is gay? Does that matter either?

I’m all about diversity. I am committed to tolerance. But why oh why is a discussion of sexual orientation needed in this context at the end run of a series of what, six books? How many thousands of words of good story-telling went down without readers being confronted with this?

Ok, here we go - a bunch of uses for banana peels. I use this really cool time-waster called StumbleUpon (a browser plug-in that brings you random Web sites). I stumbled upon a list of uses for banana skins and it so tickled me, I went exploring to find more.

Earthclinic says banana peels may cure certain warts. Their readers voted pro- and con. Some, about 10 to 1, swear the peels peel warts away, some claim all you’ll get is a slimy-brown wart sticky with banana oil.

Some people claim crispy, toasted banana peels help flowers produce bigger, lusher blooms with a big dose of potassium, but I thought nitrogen is the element that typically fertilizes plants. Some gardeners, as explained at Alison Cooke’s blog, say wrapping seedling roots, especially on fruits like tomatoes, brings a yield with bigger, brighter fruit.

Other gardeners advise drying banana skins on wire screens and using them for mulch around the base of established plants. Seems like you’d need to eat an awful lot of bananas or alert all your neighbors to save theirs.

Feed banana skins to bunnies. Guinea pigs and chickens get into banana peels, too. Geeks all over the Web advise using the inside surface of banana skins to heal ailing CDs or DVDs, as well, since the data on those disks is not on the thin layer of plastic surface. The oil, claim proponents, seal those little scratches and dings. I dunno, you might gum up your equipment with banana gunk. (Much better to use spray furniture polish and a soft cloth, let dry thoroughly and voila, healed disk.)

At SRI, an independent nonprofit research and development organization specializing in clean fuel sources, researchers have shown that in a single step, they can take pulverized coal — or anything else that contains carbon, including human waste or banana peels, for example — and directly transform the fuel’s chemical energy into electricity by electrochemically oxidizing the carbon. The banana peel, by the way has been found to contain 11% alcohol.

Taiwanese researchers (research team from Taichung’s Chung Shan Medical University) claim banana peels, rich in lutein and serotonin, could help damaged retina cells like those typical of macular degeneration, and may also help depression (as reported in the Apple Daily Newspaper, Sept 2007, Hong Kong).

Military guys can tell you the oils in a banana peel make for a great, quick shoeshine when you have an inspection right after lunch and no time to race back home for the shoe polish.

Rub the inside of a banana peel, they say, on a mosquito, gnat, or no-see-em bite as soon as you can. Natural cure proponents say itch and swelling stop and the bite heals faster, in fact, you may completely forget you were bitten.
Dust your houseplants’ leaves with the inside of a banana peel -

My second favorite herb is lavender - I’m not alone, right? Lavender, once religated only to barber shops and talcum powders, is probably the most well-known and popular fragrant herb in the world. Lavender is used in potpourri, decorations, recipes, essential oils, and so on. Not an easy plant to raise, it takes a few seasons for most varieties to mature. Some winter well once established. Some don’t. There are one or two varieties that are compact and hybridized to do well in containers.

These days, you can buy lavender online as flower buds

I’d like you to take a look at this article in the New York Times about Hillary and Bill Clinton’s daughter, Chelsea.

To my mind, parenting is one of the most difficult tasks women will ever take on - and one of the most joyous. I’m not leaving Bill Clinton and all men out of child-rearing, just putting them aside for a moment and considering Hillary’s role as mom.

Bill CLinton was really busy during Chelsea’s childhood - a politician, business man, and so on. Hillary was busy, too, but in most fmailies, when Dad is busy, he carves out the time he needs to do his thing, often by handing the children over to Mom. So I’d guess, the major influence was Hillary. And so I say- think about what you’ve heard in the media on the subject of Chelsea Clinton.

Graduated college with great grades and a terrific reputation. No headlines - adverse or otherwise. She just went about her business, building a life. She’s now an attractive, intelligent, poised, self-directed, strong woman. Like Mom.

Ok, fine if you Google deeply enough, you might find a story on page 22 of some publication reporting that Chelsea got liquored up and…whatever. ALL kids do that at some point. But you will not find reams of garbage about Chelsea, just as you won’t about Hillary - because it evidently doesn’t exist. Now, look into the lives of other recent White House kids - not such a good impression…misbehaving, sticking tongues out at people, party party party, and not an articulate thought in their little heads.

Point is - it takes a village to raise a child, but there has to be a strong, caring, smart mother in that village to see that all goes well. If a woman can create an outstanding and productive human being, she can do anything. Like maybe run a nation.