Kids, gifts and giving

I found this blog post at Daddytypes.com quite insightful and full of worthy considerations. Makes me think about the depth of "giving" that people are capable of extending.

An excerpt:

And that's when it occurred to me that maybe I was looking at regifting way too narrowly, as a way to manage down the social convention of gift giving. And that's fine. Your kid gets yet more toys they don't need, or gets duplicates, it seems like no big deal to be grateful--and then to pass them along when you think there's a better chance of their being used and loved.

But the real power of regifting might lie in teaching a kid to not only think of her friend, and give something her friend would like, but also to give something of her own to her friend. It could make the gift--and the gift process--more meaningful than, "Here's something my dad picked up for you at the toy store."

Read "The Case for Regifting"

"My experience is that women who miscarry are usually given a small window of sympathy; but women who have abortions often resort to using drugs and alcohol to cover up the pain because the people who told us it was OK to abort our babies, don't want to listen to our crying afterwards."


- Georgette Forney, an abortion survivor, co-founder of Silent No More Awareness Campaign

Spreading darkness across the world

Obama Admin calling for universal access to abortion
at United Nations meeting

An excerpt:

In recent weeks, the new US administration has interpreted "reproductive health" to include abortion.

In April, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a U.S. House subcommittee, “We [the Obama administration] happen to think that family planning is an important part of women’s health and reproductive health includes access to abortion that I believe should be safe, legal and rare.”

In this statement, Clinton also contradicted the agreement reached at the Cairo Conference which said that abortion can never be used as a part of family planning. This was a document that Clinton helped to negotiate.

'Men buy with their eyes, women buy with their ears'

That men and women are different in some ways has been established. And personally, I like it that way -- it would be pretty hard for one to complement the other if they were similar in all areas, wouldn't it?

Saw this book review of Re-render the Gender: Why the vast majority of advertising is not connecting with women -- and what we can do about it on the Marketing to Women Online site, and it presents some pretty neat and useful ideas. Marketers! Advertisers! Pay attention!

One of the first things the book points out is that while women control over 80 percent of all purchases, over 70 percent of all advertising is created by men. The book also points to the fact that the judges at creative award shows are overwhelmingly male. (A situation creative director Ruth Lee addresses in why you need women on your creative team.) This often drives creative directors to create advertising designed to appeal to the (male) judges that can win these prestigious, career-advancing awards.

So what can you do to create advertising women like?

My favorite chapter in the book was about the differences between male and female humor. (a subject near and dear to my heart - see male vs. female humor) The book has some great examples of commercials guys thought were hilarious, but bombed with women. As Thomas points out:

Guy humor often has a victim. And for the most part, women don't find that funny.

Full article here

One can always make a difference

Promoting the truth that every person deserves a chance to live, is not reserved for NGO workers or for people who are immersed in the pro-life advocacy or for health professionals whose "office" is the hospital nursery. And it's really not that hard to do.

10 things you can say and do to make abortion unwanted today

From Heartbeat International