Saying Goodbye to Wal-Mart Greeters

I am rather particular when it comes to a brick and mortar shopping experience. Specifically, I like for someone in the store to acknowledge that I am there and to ask me if they can help me with anything while I am there. This is the case even if I know exactly what I want to buy. I once went into a store, knowing exactly what I wanted to buy and walked around the store looking at things, all the time noticing that the store employee was just standing there doing what looked like absolutely nothing. At no point did he even give me a head nod. I would have happily taken my purchases in a sack or a bag if he had even tried a simple hello, but this was not to be.

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When Breastfeeding is Banned

There are many aspects in life in which I have become increasingly sensitive since my wife and I brought our beautiful baby Chaim Yosef into the world. One of those things is the ever important nutrition of our son. In more recent times it has become less of an issue as he is normally very happy to take milk from a sippy cup (soy, almond, or otherwise) as well as a number of extremely healthy solid foods but for the first nine months of his life he relied on breast milk as a means of sustenance.

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The Jack of All Ills: How the Internet Democratized Medicine

I’m old enough and just craggy enough to remember the pure disdain medical doctors had  for the internets in the early 1990′s when the web was growing by bounds and grabbing the brains of any and every eager mind.  The reason doctors hated the internet was because open access to information diluted their expertise by egalitarian dissemination of research and the democratic propagation of information; and they resented it when patients knew more about a drug or a condition than they did.  Eager patients are hungry for information and becoming the master of a single pill or a defined diagnosis is much easier than having to worry about every single chemical condition and biological solution studied at medical school.  Patients are the masters of their ailments; doctors are the jack of all ills.

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The 2012 State of the Boles Blogs Network

As we move forward into 2012 — I always prefer to look ahead than over my shoulder — it’s time to determine where we’re going and how we plan to stay on that path in publishing 14 blogs in the Boles Blogs Network.  Here’s the full list of the blogs we tend to every single day for you:

Urban Semiotic
WordPunk
Boles University Blog
Boles Blues
Panopticonic
RelationShaping
Memeingful
10txt
Scientific Aesthetic
GO INSIDE Magazine
Dramatic Medicine
Carceral Nation
Celebrity Semiotic
The United Stage of America

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The Cruelty of The Circus

When I was growing up I always wanted to go to, but never managed to go to the circus. My dreams of the circus were filled of images that I saw in books that I read — the elephant parades, the lion tamer, the tigers and monkeys, not to mention the plethora of acts involving clowns, trapeze artists, acrobats, and the like. I would on occasion get a box of animal crackers with the standard animals from the circus and enjoy munching on them when thinking about how much fun it must be to be that lion, getting the opportunity to perform in front of so many people every year. It was at a certain point, growing up, that I found out how badly the animal performers are treated.

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Elementary Education: Amway or My Way

Education is invaluable, and when opportunities for expansion and cohesion are negated, everyone suffers.  I am reminded of such a situation from many years ago in elementary school that I have now dubbed — “Amway or My Way” — and I will share that recollection with you now.

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The California Parenting Institute Does Not Like Satire

There are many new and exciting things that are discovered about parenting, and what is safe and dangerous to do in terms of the technology we use and the techniques we use for everything from feeding our children to putting them to sleep. The way we slept when we were babies would be considered dangerous and perhaps life threatening to babies raised today — take the back versus belly debate for sleeping, which each continues to have its champions depending on the age of the baby.

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Posted in Meaning | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments