Mega-Fun Math Games

Hey guys, it's Adventure Van here with a blog about Mega-Fun Math Games. Mega-Fun Math Games is a collection of 70 quick and easy games to help build math skills. It's a fun book, although simplistic, and is quite easily a fun time user or way to teach simple math to children! I've enjoyed playing multiple games from it, as especially when you get into higher age levels some of the games can become much more complex and strategist then likely originally intended. All in all, it was an enjoyable way to spend time growing up and I'm kind of sad about beginning to leave it behind. Enjoy playing your fun little learning games while they last, because they can really be quite fun.

Adventure Van, pining for the past.

Salt Sugar Fat: The Story Behind the Food

Hey guys it's Adventure Van here with a blog on Salt Sugar Fat, a book about food manufacturers written by Michael Moss. From Lunchables to Coca Cola, Frito-Lay to the Dairy Industry, the book is one large, scary ride through how Salt, Sugar, and Fat are all used in dangerous amounts in even the most benign of foods and in the most unexpected of places. And Moss goes through interviews and old advertising to show how the public face of companies that benefit from a form of addiction can help normalize and help praise dangerous things. It also documented the past of these food companies, and how adding one of these key components of salt, sugar, or fat originally was a huge boon for the creator.

Salt especially is often more utilized as a tool then a flavor, and it's used as a flavor an extreme amount. Morton Salt has a worrying monopoly on, to quote the first thing you see when you go to their web page, "The Right Salt for Literally Everything", from road salt to chicken meal to the salt that ends up on your crackers and chips. And salt is very cheap to make and manufacture, so it can be bought in huge amounts and used indiscriminately, causing large amounts to be wasted and large amounts to wind up uncounted in your food. Salt is also addictive in a way that can cause cravings, and it's hard to break off an addiction like that when the vast majority of easy to buy food is stock full of salt. Sugar is also a dangerous thing that's used in a couple of things you wouldn't expect, and in vast quantities. Sugar is in almost everything. You might expect soda to have sugar, and even orange juice and milk. Bologna has sugar in it. Butter crackers have more sugar then butter flavoring, which you've correctly guessed contain no actual butter.

Fat is... well, fat. It's showed very often as a huge problem, but the near constant rage directed at it has nearly all been either misplaced or moved very quickly from the actual fatty foods, or the fat has moved from one food to another. Upon milk being demonized as full of fat, you probably noticed that the skim milk came into existence very quickly, but you may not have noticed how much cheese suddenly began getting produced as a way to get rid of this excess fat, and you very likely never realized how much companies began pushing cheese not only into all of their foods, but also as a cheap ingredient for any homemade meals you make.

I'm not saying that any of this is bad on it's own, but the way it's portrayed in modern media and the way it's pushed on everyone is a dangerous thing for health concerns in America and even all around the world. And it's not an easy problem to solve. These companies are too far into salt, sugar, and fat, that changing the amounts lower completely kills the taste of these products, and it's impossible to still make a profit.

That's Adventure Van, sighing.

Scottish Robbert Burns Celebration

A friend and I went to a Scottish Celebration at a volunteer fire department on the 25/1/15 so i could enjoy Scottish music, dancing and food by being there with it. I had haggis, mashed potatoes, and scones. There were sword dances.

Personal Cars

Adventure Van here, reposting one of my college papers!

Despite the American tendency to buy personal cars, reaching two or even three per household, it is still a possible move to create a functioning metro system in the vast majority of cities improving involved from air to traffic. It’s also a helpful way in reducing taxes, as the fares would help go to that, as well as lowering gas taxes. And most transit systems are a good investment in helping communities grow and improve. I’ll be discussing the environmental and social benefits of building such public transportation.

Because of how the systems work, they help provide transportation at a lesser cost to the environment. Unlike cars, which use more oil per person that requires drilling to a much greater extent and then put gasses into the air and oil onto the streets when in use, the more environmentally sound option of buses take down the amount of oil and diesel needed to a much steadier amount. Because the amount needed goes down, the drilling decreases, as well as the gasses and leaked oil amounts.

As much as some argue that such damage is either nonexistent or not consequential, those are falsified viewpoints. The damage that a single car does is minimal, but with 20 people driving separate cars, it gets larger. When you build up to hundreds and thousands of cars clogging up a highway, the pollution it causes can sometimes be very visible, and very dangerous. Divide those thousands and put them on buses, and the damage caused decreases heavily, along with people still getting to their destination.

Building a metro system in your local area, with buses and subway/trolleys, will be extreme additions towards keeping those who do need cars in a much more traffic free area. Since fewer people will be forced to use cars to get around, the amount of cars on the road at any given time will decrease. And because the buses and trolleys are singular entities, it doesn’t matter how many people need to use them, any addition they add to traffic will be the same no matter the amount of people.

Even with the counter argument that such buses and trolley cars would be capable of adding a significant amount of traffic, it would still reduce traffic overall due to the condensing of people from multiple cars to one bus. And the only real problem would be getting directly stuck behind a bus for a large amount of time because you’re going on the same path, but then it’d be simpler to just take that bus instead of driving completely separately.

And any public transportation gives people freedom. Trolleys completely negate traffic jams just from their design, allowing more control over scheduling. It also allows those unable to have a car to be able to travel at basically the same speed, giving better access to jobs and other important events. Buses and trolleys are usually very bike friendly, allowing people to take their bikes to stops with them and therefore opening many more options of pathways and open doors.

I’m not saying through all of this that cars are bad. However, because we have such a large number of cars and such a wide extent of roads for them, they aren’t all that great, but more of a necessity. And although the cost for building a subway would be somewhat extensive depending on the area, bulldozing neighborhoods for highways is also costly and displaces people, as well as being a horrible detriment to local sightseeing. They also carry more danger, as drivers of cars can be impaired in such ways that a driver of a bus or trolley very unlikely to be.

At the end, it is a huge improvement to all circles of transportation and environmental safety to build in public transportation. Costs will go down, likely including taxes. Cars will be off the road, not only helping the environment but also putting a halt to traffic jams. There will be an extreme excess of access available to those who may not be able to otherwise get opportunities for jobs or housing. And such systems can be made to look beautiful, giving tourism a boost. All in all, it is a huge advantage for most population points to use public transit.

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/27Ronecar.html

https://smartasset.com/mortgage/best-cities-for-public-transportation

metro.nfta.com                                                                                                

Won't You Be My Neighbor

Hey guys, it's Adventure Van here with a blog about Mister Rogers. I was privileged to see the documentary, Won't You Be My Neighbor, and it was a heart wrenching but lovely documentary about the kindness and life of the extraordinary Mister Rogers. From the very beginning, to how his childhood played into his work, to the extraordinary lengths he would go to to explain complex, serious topics in a child friendly manner, and how often he was talked off as another child's program. It brought tears to my eyes several times, and is most definitely worth watching if you get an opportunity to.

Adventure Van, neighbor.