BILL GATES' SPEECH TO MT. WHITNEY HIGH SCHOOL in Visalia, California. Love him or hate him, he sure hits the nail on the head with this! To anyone with kids of any age, here's some advice. Bill Gates recently gave a speech at a High School about 11 things they did not and will not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world. Rule 1: Life is not fair -- get used to it! Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself. Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both. Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss. Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping -- they called it opportunity. Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them. Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you are. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room. Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life. Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time. Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs. Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

It seems you can make a man out of a woman but you can't take the woman out of a man. Chaz Bono is a great example of this. She was born a girl and christened Chastity. Chaz says she knew from the time she was a child that she was a boy growing in a girl's body. She figured out who she was and thats great. Yet, I do call her a woman because she is still in transition and hasn't completed the journey to manhood; she is 'legally' male but physically and psychologically female. She wants to help children who have gender identity issues. Thats rather benevolent! There are so many out there who need it.

Guess who she has set her sights on?!! Young Miss Shiloh Jolie-Pitt...While she doesn't know the Jolie-Pitts and 'wouldn't assume anything about their daughter's choice to dress boyishly' she would "love to talk to them to atleast let them know we have this resource for them if they ever need it." Talk about a classic case of judging a book by its cover. If a man is effeminate in behaviour and mannerisms, maybe even voice, does that automatically make him feminine or gay? No it doesn't, but we would consider it because we're looking only at the cover. While lucky Chaz will certainly get a lot of publicity riding on the coattails of this famous couple, the poor child could just be a tomboy. Give her a break!

This piece of news also made me wonder about Chaz's fiancee-is she a lesbian, a heterosexual or a bisexual? Its puzzling. They got together while Chaz was still 'legally' a woman and now their relationship is changing 'legally' into a heterosexual one. Hmmm...

This picture was taken in December 2010. A friend of mine was carrying my niece and I was standing next to them. Baby suddenly reached over, grabbed my arm and leaned against me. It was a moment of pure, unconditional love. I'm glad I have this picture to remind me.