Creative Mom Of Two Packs Up Magical Bento Box Lunches For Her Boys

Mom Li Ming prides herself on her Bento Monsters, the gorgeous boxed lunches she makes for her two school-age sons.

She says she makes about six of the lunches (also called charaben or kyaraben) every week.

“I started making charabens when [my older son] went to primary school in 2011. He missed me terribly then and had problems adjusting to the longer hours at primary school. I started packing him charabens, hoping to cheer him up and let him feel my presence and love through them,” she wrote on her website. “My younger boy … loves the charabens I make for his brother and requested for them too.”

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bento monsters

Each of her elaborate creations is filled with both nutrients and whimsy. Ming shapes food to look like cartoon characters or animals, and shares step-by-step tutorials on how to re-create her magical meals on her blog. Previous designs have included quail eggs draped in seaweed to look like tiny penguins, and a Hello Kitty snowskin mooncake.

“It’s difficult to say which ones are my favorite because I like all of them for different reasons. Ideas come from everywhere,” she told The Daily Mail.

In the future, she plans to release a book about how she does it. For now, here is a sampling of her fantastic bento boxes.

H/t BoredPanda

California Adopts 'Yes Means Yes' Sexual Assault Rule

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Gov. Jerry Brown announced Sunday that he has signed a bill that makes California the first in the nation to define when “yes means yes” and adopt requirements for colleges to follow when investigating sexual assault reports.

State lawmakers last month approved SB967 by Sen. Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, as states and universities across the U.S. are under pressure to change how they handle rape allegations. Campus sexual assault victims and women’s advocacy groups delivered petitions to Brown’s office on Sept. 16 urging him to sign the bill. De Leon has said the legislation will begin a paradigm shift in how college campuses in California prevent and investigate sexual assaults. Rather than using the refrain “no means no,” the definition of consent under the bill requires “an affirmative, conscious and voluntary agreement to engage in sexual activity.”

“With one in five women on college campuses experiencing sexual assault, it is high time the conversation regarding sexual assault be shifted to one of prevention, justice, and healing,” de Leon said in lobbying Brown for his signature.

The legislation says silence or lack of resistance does not constitute consent. Under the bill, someone who is drunk, drugged, unconscious or asleep cannot grant consent.

Lawmakers say consent can be nonverbal, and universities with similar policies have outlined examples as a nod of the head or moving in closer to the person.

Advocates for victims of sexual assault supported the change as one that will provide consistency across campuses and challenge the notion that victims must have resisted assault to have valid complaints.

The bill requires training for faculty reviewing complaints so that victims are not asked inappropriate questions when filing complaints. The bill also requires access to counseling, health care services and other resources.

When lawmakers were considering the bill, critics said it was overreaching and sends universities into murky legal waters. Some Republicans in the Assembly questioned whether statewide legislation is an appropriate venue to define sexual consent between two people.

There was no opposition from Republicans in the state Senate.

Gordon Finley, an adviser to the National Coalition for Men, wrote an editorial asking Brown not to sign the bill. He argued that “this campus rape crusade bill” presumes the guilt of the accused.

SB967 applies to all California post-secondary schools, public and private, that receive state money for student financial aid. The California State University and University of California systems are backing the legislation after adopting similar consent standards this year.

UC President Janet Napolitano recently announced that the system will voluntarily establish an independent advocate to support sexual assault victims on every campus. An advocacy office also is a provision of the federal Survivor Outreach and Support Campus Act proposed by U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer and Rep. Susan Davis of San Diego, both Democrats.

Students of Jefferson County Colorado Give the Nation a History Lesson

When high school students in Jefferson County, Colorado walked out in protest against the right-wingers on the school board who purged their history curriculum of content they deemed “unpatriotic” they probably learned more in a week of direct action than they could learn in a year of going to class.

Not content to write a letter of complaint, or sign a petition, or tap “Like” on a Facebook page – these young people hit the streets in the grand tradition of civil disobedience in America; the same tradition the Jefferson County school board seeks to airbrush out.

Gretchen Carlson of FOX News calls these inspiring young people a bunch of “punks.” And the president of Jefferson County’s Board of Education, Ken Witt, calls them “pawns” in a scam perpetrated by (who else?) the teachers’ union. How terribly disrespectful Carlson and Witt (and others like them) are in dismissing the students’ actions and claiming they cannot think for themselves.

Right-wing critics adhere to a rigid ideological script that has no room for student protest. Yet, along with the students, there are parents, teachers, and even the educators in charge of the AP curriculum who are saying history should never be sanitized.

I don’t expect people like Gretchen Carlson or Ken Witt to be cognizant of the fact that it was a small group of African-American eighteen-year-olds who sparked the lunchcounter protests in Greensboro, North Carolina in February 1960 that contributed mightily to the historic process of transforming the nation’s race relations.

Neither do I expect them to know anything about the young people who succeeded in bringing down the voting age from twenty-one to eighteen after a generation of their peers were sent off to fight and die in Vietnam but weren’t old enough to vote for dogcatcher in a local election (winning us the 26th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution). And I doubt if Carlson and Witt ever heard of George Orwell who wrote: “Who controls the past controls the future. And who controls the present controls the past.”

Young people today have lived their entire lives under the shadow of multiple foreign wars, the worst economic collapse in 75 years, and governing institutions dominated by Koch Brothers plutocrats that seem wholly unresponsive to the needs of the people. They’ve been exposed to terrorist attacks and beheadings by America’s vast array of enemies, and are now urged to get behind yet another American war in Syria. They’ve lived through the dashed hopes of the Obama presidency, and they’ve been subjected to fossil fuel industry propaganda telling them to bury their heads in the sand about global warming.

They’ve also lived through the Occupy Wall Street movement’s exposure of the bankers’ crimes, and ongoing racial conflict like we’ve seen recently in Ferguson, Missouri. The same week their protests broke out calling for critical thinking in their American history courses the world saw the giant People’s Climate March in New York City. The student demonstrations in Jefferson County are about the present as much as they are about the past.

Given what they’ve seen throughout their childhoods it’s not surprising that these kids would sense that the jingoistic version of American history that their right-wing school board wants to spoon feed them isn’t up to snuff.

It’s doubly meaningful that Columbine High School is one of the schools the Right has targeted since it was the site of one of the most horrific mass shootings in American history. Do the right-wingers on the school board also want to purge the Columbine shooting from the curriculum because it might reflect poorly on the NRA?

The student activists of Jefferson County show us that the younger generation that has climate change and a million other possibly catastrophic forces dumped on its lap has the potential to rise to the occasion and steer the world toward a better place than their parents and grandparents left for them.

In 1980, when Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States was first published and a few high school teachers assigned parts of it in class he received dozens of letters from students who were either intrigued or angered by what he had written. Many of them expressed their dismay that the exploitation of Native Americans had been whitewashed out of the familiar narrative about Christopher Columbus “discovering” America. Most of them figured if they had been lied to about the seamier side of Columbus “sailing the Ocean blue,” then maybe they had been lied to about other aspects of history as well. (Zinn used to joke that the Columbus part of his book sparked the most fierce backlash because it’s in the opening paragraphs and many of his most vociferous critics probably never read past the first few pages.)

Contrary to popular belief, history doesn’t deal with simply piling up a bunch of dead facts about dead people. It deals with interpreting the meaning of past events and the role of human beings in shaping those past events. Historians aren’t walking Wikipedia pages. Someone should explain this to the Jefferson County school board and the Louie Gomerts over in Texas who have somehow come to oversee the content of history textbooks.

Frederick Nietzsche famously differentiated in The Use and Abuse of History “monumental” history from the “antiquarian” (like Civil War re-enactors) and the “critical.” What academic historians do (including high school textbook writers) is critical history. What the right-wingers want is monumental history: a grand narrative that reinforces all of the myths of our past along with uncontested power relations. Wall Street bankers and big corporations come out looking really good, while “disrupters” of calm, i.e. those who engage in social movements and civil disobedience, are to be omitted or ridiculed.

We’ve seen this phenomenon before when the Right seeks to purge our history of anything that might reflect poorly on past elites or power relations. William Bennett, Liz Cheney, Allan Bloom, D’Nesh (the money launderer) D’Souza, and many other right-wingers have sought to take a page from the authoritarians’ playbook and re-write American history to throw the most favorable light on their would-be ideological soul mates.

In 1992, during the quincentennial ceremonies of Columbus reaching the Western Hemisphere the Right ginned up “controversy” over the idea of acknowledging the genocidal effects of Spanish colonialism on indigenous populations. A few years later, right-wingers were “outraged” again over a Smithsonian exhibit of the Enola Gay that deigned to include a few words about the victims of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

A few years earlier, Allan Bloom, a Cornell professor who was scared shitless by the anti-apartheid “shantytowns” that had sprung up on campus, wrote The Closing of the American Mind (1987). Bloom whined about “political correctness” on college campuses and railed against Black Studies, Ethnic Studies, and Women Studies. He became a darling of the Right and a best-selling author by comparing “political correctness” on college campuses in the 1980s with what had taken place at German universities under the Weimar Republic in the 1930s.

One of the great ironies of Bloom’s authoritative indictment of multiculturalism was its timing. He identified the “crisis” not in a period of liberal dominance, but when Reagan conservatives for years had been setting the agenda of the nation’s political discourse. The Closing of the American Mind also affected the debate about the nature of American freedom at a time when millions of people living under real tyranny in Eastern Bloc countries were looking to the openness and pluralism of American society as an inspiration that progressive change might be possible in their own societies.

Right-wingers always overreach and try to erase or bend history to fit their pre-conceived ideological notions. We owe the students of Jefferson County our deep gratitude and appreciation for standing up to power and reminding us about the importance of critical history being taught in our public schools. By engaging in civil disobedience they’ve taken it a step further. Their actions speak louder than any words. And hopefully they’ll take their protests all the way to final victory! Throw the censors and Commissars off the school board! Recall them! Embarrass them! Dog them! Such actions are part of a long tradition of militancy and direct democracy that runs throughout American history (if one cares to look).

Alleged iOS 8 Passcode Bypass Appears to Be Bogus (Updated)

YouTube user EverythingApplesPro claims to have found a security vulnerability involving Apple’s iOS 8 Touch ID and Passcode. Update: After further testing, we’ve determined that this is almost definitely just Touch ID registering the thumbprint on a hair trigger.

Read more…



Windows 9 Will Be Free Upgrade For Windows 8 Users, Microsoft Indonesia Confirms

windows 9When Apple introduced OS X Mavericks, they also provided it as a free upgrade to OS X users which is a nice change of pace where previously they charged customers for upgrading to a newer version of the operating system. It has been rumored that Microsoft could be following in Apple’s footsteps with Windows 9.

Well it seems that Microsoft Indonesia’s President Andreas Diantoro has pretty much confirmed it. Speaking to Indonesian publication Detik (via BGR), Diatoro was quoted as saying that Windows 9 will be provided as a free upgrade to existing Windows 8 users. It is unclear if it will only be limited to Windows 8 users or all Windows users, but for now it looks like it will only be for Windows 8 users.

He goes on to state that it will be extremely easy for Windows 8 users to upgrade to Windows 9, kind of the same way that OS X users upgrade their operating system through the Mac App Store. Microsoft has yet to officially announce Windows 9, or whatever it is called, but with an event being held on the 30th of September, we guess we won’t have to wait too long to find out the details, so be sure to check back with us this Tuesday!

Windows 9 Will Be Free Upgrade For Windows 8 Users, Microsoft Indonesia Confirms

, original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

Cortana Updated, Will Now Track Concerts Of Your Favorite Artists

image thumb90It seems that Microsoft has been making some great strides at improving the functionality and range of services that Cortana could offer. Recently we’ve seen an update in which Cortana would be able to help users define words without having to launch a dictionary app and type it in manually, and how Cortana could also be used for fitness.

Well if you’re a fan of concerts, you might be interested to learn that in the latest update to Cortana, Microsoft has added the ability to keep an eye out for concerts in your area for your favorite artists. It is interesting to see how this works because it seems that there is no customization option. Instead users are given the option to turn it on or off, so presumably Cortana will determine your favorite artists, or at least artists you’re interested in, from your music collection or your searches.

This might not necessarily be the biggest update, but it certainly helps Microsoft in creating a true personal assistant as they will be able to help you remember import meetings, but at the same time will also be able to take into account your hobbies and things that might interest you. It will be exciting to see what other features Microsoft has planned for Cortana, but what do you guys think? Any particular feature you’d like to see arrive in the future?

Cortana Updated, Will Now Track Concerts Of Your Favorite Artists

, original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

The Nixie Is A Wearable Drone For Your Wrist That Can Snap Selfies

We’re sure you guys have probably come across sci-fi movies or TV shows where a character has a tiny drone that can take off from their wrist. Well if you thought that would be pretty cool to own, you could very well own such a drone in the future. This is thanks to Intel’s wearables competition in which one of the finalists created a drone called the Nixie.

This is a wearable camera/drone that can be strapped to your wrist. However it can also be command to take off from your wrist in which it will be able to hover, reposition itself, and snap a selfie of you. The selfie part does seem a tad novel but we guess the main idea is there – a wearable drone.

The drone can be sent flying using a gesture, kind of like how you might command a bird on your arm to take off and whatnot. Unfortunately as it stands, the Nixie exists more as a concept rather than an actual product, although Christoph Kohstall and his team do have a prototype at the moment.

Now we can imagine that there are many uses for such a drone apart from taking selfies, and now thanks to their $50,000 prize, it looks like the team will be able to further their research and turn it into something viable. In the meantime what kind of uses do you guys think such a device could have?

The Nixie Is A Wearable Drone For Your Wrist That Can Snap Selfies

, original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

Destiny Bug Reveals Content And Objectives From Possible Expansion

destiny house of wolves expansion leak 1So Destiny was released not too long ago and we guess many players are still working their way through the game, but would it be too early to start thinking about possible expansion sets? Well it seems that the folks over at Bungie could have already been working on an expansion, thanks to a bug that revealed some of the quests for a possible expansion.

The bug basically granted players access to a list of objectives in which it states, “Requirements not me”, and where the requirement is to own a particular expansion that has yet to be announced or released by the folks at Bungie yet. According to a post by Redditor KilledByDice (via VG247), an entire list of the quests and screenshots and videos have been collected and posted online.

Now it is possible that the screenshots grabbed are fake since it would be pretty easy for someone with decent Photoshop skills to make the changes, however as we said, videos have also been uploaded to show off the objectives in question, and that would take a little bit more work to fake.

In any case Bungie has yet to comment on the bug and possible expansions/DLCs for Destiny. At the same time we guess it’s not that much of a stretch to think that a game as big as Destiny has no plans for expansion content or updates that would introduce additional content to the game, but we will keep our eyes peeled nonetheless.

Destiny Bug Reveals Content And Objectives From Possible Expansion

, original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

Ubisoft Looking To Create More “Child Of Light” Type Titles In The Future

child of light 640x359Ubisoft might be known for creating some pretty big titles and franchises, like Watch Dogs which managed to sell pretty well during its first week, and the Assassin’s Creed franchise which appears to be going strong and with two new Assassin’s Creed titles planned for release later this year.

However Ubisoft has also dabbled in smaller games in the past, like the well-received Child of Light, and the good news is that if you enjoy smaller titles instead of more epic ones, you might be pleased to learn that Ubisoft has plans to make smaller scaled game, and that the publisher is looking to create more games that don’t necessarily have to become huge AAA franchises.

Speaking to the folks at CVG, Ubisoft Montreal’s VP Of Creative Lionel Raynaud, it seems that the success of Child of Light has inspired the studio to keep pushing for titles like it. “So yes, we will encourage other initiatives like Child of Light and there’s a chance that we will have many more games like that in the future. I already have many different projects that are in the pitch stage.”

But what say you? Are you looking forward to seeing such initiatives from Ubisoft in the future? Or would you prefer them to keep churning out huge franchises like Watch Dogs or Assassin’s Creed in the future?

Ubisoft Looking To Create More “Child Of Light” Type Titles In The Future

, original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

Shmitta: The Bible's Solution to America's Debt Problems?

The book of Deuteronomy calls us to spend one out of every seven years actively eliminating debt, in a practice called shmittat kessafim — the release of money.

Deuteronomy 15:1-6 reads:

At the end of every seven years, you shall celebrate the year of release (shmitta). This is the release: every lender shall forgive any debt owed by his neighbor and brother when God’s shmitta year comes.

How poignant that it has been seven years since the problems of the Great Recession began. Where are we now? Income disparity soars, student loans threaten to be the next subprime mortgages, and millions of Americans struggle daily to make ends meet. Unmanageable, crippling debt is still harming millions of American families. Here are some of the sobering statistics:

  • The average college student is carrying $30,000 in student debt.
  • Over 8 million households carry more than $20,000 in credit card debt.
  • Some 12 million people borrow nearly $50 billion a year through payday loans, with interest rates up to 35 times those charged for credit cards and 80 times home mortgages and auto loans.

Why these staggering levels of debt? To say it’s because Americans are lazy or don’t know how to manage their money dangerously oversimplifies this crisis.

A Harvard study found that illness and health care expenses lead to about 50 percent of bankruptcies. The spiraling costs of higher education mean tens of thousands of dollars of debt for millions of Americans trying to build a better future. Going into debt isn’t about fancy sneakers or big screen TVs — it’s often about survival.

As a rabbi, I know that for those mired in unrelenting debt, it’s also a spiritual crisis. Debt harms relationships and is one of the most common causes of divorce. Health problems, emotional difficulty, homelessness, and most tragically, suicide, can often be linked to debt.

We need help. Americans have lifted our eyes to Washington and to Wall Street for solutions to the debt crisis, but for millions of Americans the problems are unsolved. From where will our help come?

Five ways to fight debt with faith
There’s a key source of wisdom and guidance on debt that has been overlooked, and if taken seriously, could transform the economic lives of millions of Americans: the Bible.

The Bible recognizes the critical role that debt plays in helping a society flourish: according to the great Medieval scholar Maimonides, the highest level of giving is to provide a loan so that a person can get back on his or her feet. At the same time, the Bible recognizes that debt can spiral out of control and have deeply negative consequences on those lost in its grip.

According to the Jewish calendar, the next shmitta year begins now — September 2014 through September 2015. In shmitta’s spirit, this is the time for faith-led and faith-supported nationwide efforts to help release millions of Americans from the bonds of personal debt.

Here are five suggestions for ways that faith communities big and small can realize this powerful practice this shmitta year:

1. Offer free financial literacy workshops to help lift people out of debt.

2. Join in political efforts for meaningful student-debt reform.

3. Join in efforts for meaningful payday-loan reform.

4. Encourage businesses, banks, and one another to practice loan forgiveness.

5. Promote faith-based, interest-free loan groups and credit unions to create alternative loan sources that do not lock people into unmanageable debt.

In addition to the concrete actions mentioned above, the very act of speaking about debt from the pulpit could be transformative. For many, personal debt is a shameful secret. The notion that crippling debt is not always a personal failing, but often a product of larger forces has a redemptive power that can lift people from shame and despair.

How powerful then that in the verses describing the shmitta year, the Bible places the moral responsibility of debt on the creditor, not the borrower.

The release of debts is just one facet of the Biblical conception of the shmitta year. Other Biblical mentions of shmitta include profound calls for a year that transforms the way we relate to the earth, animals, one another, and God.

A faith-based movement to revive this ancient practice is already underway in light of global climate change and questions of environmental sustainability, the pervasiveness of technology in our lives, our own personal sustainability, communal living, and much more. We stand on the edge of a powerful, weighty moment.

Collectively, our faiths challenge us to take profound, heavenly ideas and make them real in our broken world. This shmitta year, let’s meet that challenge.