The VLF specializes in — as you may have guessed — literacy. The VLF “provides funding and technical support to private, volunteer literacy organizations throughout Virginia through challenge grants and direct consultation.” You may have also noticed the giant VLF fundraiser button currently wreaking havoc on the ol’ layout. Put these things together and you get that Haduken.com is supporting this holiday fundraiser for the VLF.

I want Haduken.com to raise 250$ for this charity by January 1st 2k6.

Haduken is a big part of my life and the only thing I have successfully committed (thing not person, hearts Val!) to for any length of time. There have only been a couple of weeks in the last five years that Haduken has been down. I mean that is ages in i-net time. That’s why we are supporting the VLF. None of this would even be happening if we couldn’t read and write.

There are a ton of people that read this blog and have read this blog for a long long time. There are about 80 people who read this site daily. We’ve had 348 unique visitors and 118 visitors who’ve hit the site between 50-100 times just since the beginning of December. So I’m hoping, and I think the statistics bear it out, that Haduken is some part of your life too. Again, that wouldn’t be possible if you couldn’t read or write.

This charity is a chance for bloggers and blog readers to help out other people who haven’t had the same chances and privileges we’ve had. So again, I’m challenging us to raise 250$ in a month. That’s only ten people giving 25$! Everyone has twenty five dollars to give to a worthy cause like this. So seriously, with eighty people reading this site daily, we should git ‘er done. Also, if you are a blogger I’d encourage you to add a (possibly the smaller one) VLF badge to your blog, avialable here, and blog about the fundraiser to your readership.

If you hate people that can’t read think of it as a 25$ membership fee for FIVE FREAKING YEARS at Haduken. Plus I know some of you in RL and I am going to be bugging you about it. Get ready.

Donate now!

Full Disclosure
I (Ross A. Catrow, aka. MaxPower) own PharrOut a Richmond webdesign/development company. PharrOut is hosting this fundraiser for the VLF through RVABlogs — a PharrOut creation. That doesn’t change the fact that it is a supremely worthy cause and *everyone* should donate — or I might kick you in the teeth?.

There has been some talk on the board lately about how high school curriculums could be improved. This is about as true as true can be. So I decided to brainstorm what would be worthwhile to be learning in a high school social studies program, over the course of a few years.

I remember learning about world history, US history from 1492 onward, a heavy emphasis on the Civil War, and a lot of stuff about government in social studies in high school. While I find all of that stuff extremely valuable, especially the teapot dome scandal and the identity of every explorer, I think there are many things that get left out that would be worthwhile to learn.

1. Practical Economics - Loans, house buying, equity, debt management, 401k, retirement planning, taxes, and so forth. Every human needs to know about these things. Few learn about them in school.
2. Early Childhood Psychology - There are some basic things about babies that we know that would be valuable I would think. Why do some parents have better control over their kids than others? We know some reasons, right? Okay, lets maybe teach those to kids before they have babies.
3. Comparative Religion - Here are what all the religions are about. Does your religion not have more than 1,000,000 members? Sorry, you don’t get to be in the curriculum. I learned about this in 9th grade social studies, but it was too brief.
4. The Law and Your Rights - I remember getting a booklet on this once. I learned what Miranda rights are. That’s about it. But lets figure out what the most common ways for citizens to interact with the law are, and lets talk about those in school. What do you do if you’re wrongly accused of something? What do you do if you find a dead body? What do you do if you accidentally strangle a hooker? People need to know.
5. 20th Century History - Seriously. What a joke that we don’t know this. In September of sophomore year of high school, Theo Roosevelt should be president, and we go forward from there. We should be able to knock out a good 20th century history in a year. What’s more important - the names of which explorers discovered what, the name of the country that financed Columbus’s journey to America, or the number of people who died in the Vietnam war? I learned and forgot the first one, I remember the second one, and I couldn’t even guess at the third one. I bet that’s the way a lot of people are. But is Vietnam or the cold war more important to the modern state of the world than military strategy in the Civil War, for example? You bet.
6. Current News Literature - Where can you learn about the world around me? How is the New York Times different from the Wall Street Journal?
7. Philosophy - A BRIEF sketch of the history of ideas. We owe quite a debt to some dudes who figured some stuff out. This could be boring, so it needs to be made brief.
8. Comparitive anthropology - What do other cultures do and why?

Lets maybe see if we can (a) figure out what is most useful for humans to succeed in life and (b) teach those things to kids.

Halloween is coming, and so I have decided that Haduken should have a pumpkin carve-off. So carve or paint you pumpkins take a pic and send it to Max (I’m making him the judge). The only rule is that you can’t use the stencils that are sold in stores. Some of you may know from my Pinky-the-gay-bear-face-pumpkin that I take this seriously, consider that me throwing down the gauntlet. Winner’s pic to be posted on or near the 31st.

People know that I love my cat. Sometimes I gaze at her and declare that her beauty far surpasses that of all other cats and most other animals. And even though she may never curl up on my lap or snuggle at my hip like a good cat, she is a wonderful pet.

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Reminiscences on the Deep South, birthplace of the Confederacy and various other instances of political unrest throughout history, centered on Charleston, but travelling all the way to Bath, England for insights - Van takes us on another journey to the heart of the American South.

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New Tech Trends!

Less organization, more cool things to look at!

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I’ve been a Big Sister to an 11 year old girl named Jazzmen for about seven months. I used to meet her once or twice a week during her lunch period at Chimborazo elementary school. We were site-based and could only see each other at school, and even though I lived a block away, I couldn’t point out my house or give her my phone number.

As of this month, we are “Community Based,� which is what everyone thinks of when they think of Big Brothers, Big Sisters. We had our first outing on Saturday and this kid is amazing.

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While scrolling around the planet today (Google has recently included satellite images of distant lands into Google Maps) I came across several places I would never want to live. So there be the contest (no prizes). Where in the world is Carmen SanDiego would you not like to live?

Here is a good example. Or maybe here.

Vote in the comments!

[Links Fixed — Ed.]