Good one. My mom used to do this with us! I also recommend popping the kids in a cool bubble bath. Mine can stay in for an hour, playing with cups and straws.

Great idea! Another hot day fun idea is a kiddie pool full of cooked spaghetti or other noodles. My mum used to do that for us kids and it was a cool change from just plain water.

That sounds fun! Sadly, we're in the middle of a drought in the South, so I'm pretty certain neighbors would be furiously calling the aqua police if we painted houses with water...

My grandfather used to have me paint his garage while he worked on machines. I learned a lot without getting in the way.

Very eco conscious, hm?
using treated, clean water to "paint" the house, the sideways, the car, the kitchen sink.
A real smart move. NOT.

Just like having a gaz-guzzling hummer, using treated water to play isn´t very nice, to say the least.

My mom used this trick to keep me entertained -- it works great on concrete because it's so dark when wet. She'd give me a bucket of water and an old paintbrush and I'd draw stuff in the driveway and on the sidewalk. Ah, memories.

How is this bad for the environment? All you need is a bucket of water and a brush, there was no mention of a hose. We're talking about, what, a gallon or two of water for a few hours fun?

Helping raise environmental awareness is what I do both for my job and in my free time, and I would be thrilled if this kind of activity supplanted most other kinds of recreation. The environmental impact is virtually nil.

Wow, what a waste of water. While your kid is busing wasting water, do you delightfully mull over the large population in the world who DON'T HAVE ACCESS TO CLEAN DRINKING WATER?

Jesus Christ, do you live in a cave somewhere? The amount of water used by a kid to paint the house would be a fraction of the water necessary to fill a kiddee pool, run a sprinkler, or have an epic Super Soaker battle. If your version of green involves sitting very still, trying not to consume any resources, you might as well blow up the planet now, because apart from you and a couple of hairshirt-wearing ascetics, no one in the world is going to adopt your program.

yeah, because once you put that water on your house it's gone forever.

Also:

Zombie@6: "Delightfully" -- you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

MHY@4: Oh yes, by all means, let's given children untreated water to play in, because the carbon footprint of treating a case of the squirts that has your kid flushing the toilet forty times a day for a week while you try to rehydrate her with electrolyte salts is so much better for the planet than a bucket of clean, treated water to play with on a hot day.

Are you seriously suggesting that we solve the planet's water problems by forcing children to play exclusively in contaminated water?

Ooh! Great play idea!

"Here, kids. Why don't you paint the house with this bucket of water? Oh, wait, let me put some soap in it, and some sponges. Make sure you paint the windows real good. And paint daddy's car, too, will ya? And after that, you can 'paint' the front yard with the lawnmower. Now get to wor...uh, playing. Daddy's gonna go play 'dead' in the hammock."

I was going to make a water conservation joke but then I saw these "serious" complaints. For FSM's sake, chill. I guess you people don't flush your toilets, rinse toothpaste out of your mouth, shower, or wash your dishes.

Now back to my joke..

Cory, California wants its water back.

Thankyouthankyou ill be here all week. Try the fish.

For Green Meanies,

Actually, using water for this activity is far more ecologically sound than dumping thousands of gallons into a pool and filling that water with chlorine and other chemicals. That pollutes potable water and disrupts of the water cycle.

"Water Painting" would is a mult-task when you think about it. You can clean off your house (with kids using hoses and not some chemical scrubber or much more wasteful power-washer) water your plants (that water running off the house is seeping into the soil around your home) and perhaps even adding a cooling benefit to your home? I can't be certain about the last one, perhaps someone more knowledgeable can say?

Oh, and it's FUN for KIDS. Lighten up folks. Hair-shirts are itchy.

Virtually nil? How many kids are there in America? In Canada? Britain? So, each of these kids get a gallon of water to waste and that becomes how much water used by lazy parents?

There are far better uses for water than this. Why not teach them about recycling paper by mixing a some shredded paper with water? Less than a cup of water is needed to make a single cookie cutter sized shape. You can even mix in seeds and teach kids about planting - the paper pulp nourishes the seeds as they start growing. Not only have they not wasted water, they've learned about recycling, planting, and making their own greeting cards.

Zombie: You seem to be suggesting that children should never, ever be given water to play with in quantities of more than 250ml. Do you think children should be allowed to frolic under a sprinkler? How about a kiddee pool? Squirt guns? Water balloons?

What about science projects? I learned about water surface tension from my father by experimenting with different sized vessels and an eyedropper on the kitchen table. Maybe he should have just sat me down in the living room and read aloud to me from the encyclopedia?

And how about all the child development specialists, the Piagists and so on, who tell us that cognitively, water-play is an important part of human (and, indeed, all primate) learning?

Should I stop giving my daughter baths and just wipe her down with a moist towelette? What about those times she fails to finish the contents of her sippee cup (which holds 500 ml, more than double the amount you are comfortable allowing children to use). Should that water be boiled and re-used the next day, or am I allowed to pour it down the sink? Should I install a cistern for unused sippee cup water to use on watering the houseplants? Or maybe I should just get rid of the houseplants (who drink about a litre a day -- quadruple your recommended allowance for children).

Which houseplants are we allowed to have? Which activities are our children allowed to have? Will you be coming by our houses with a green armband to supervise our water use? Am I allowed to dilute the baby's rice cereal 5-1, or should I stick to 3-1 and deal with the constipation and vomiting using dry-wipes?

Honestly, if you set out to discredit the idea of conservation, you could not do a better job than @13 -- any sane person thinking about trying conservation confronted with this standard would conclude either a) the whole thing was cooked up by extremists who expect you to keep such a close eye on your water use you'll be drinking out of a thimble or b) the situation is so dire that the only way out is to live like a miserable hermit, so might as well live up the planet's last few years while they last.

You guys are 100% ecologically conscious at all times, aren't you? You never waste a drop of water, ever? And the definition of 'not wasting' would be figuring out the optimal duration of your showers, the minimum amount required to flush a loo, always drinking every glass to the last drop, but never more than is enough to satisfy your thirst. Using water for fun is completely out. Pools are not allowed, running through sprinklers is strictly forbidden.

Are we on Arrakis here or something? Ecology is important but let the kids have a little fun for heaven's sake. No one who's even using a computer has the right to complain about this kind of 'waste'.

That said, painting with water doesn't sound like fun to me at all, since the stuff would dry too fast to see the effect, but kids like weird things sometimes.

Cry -

Yr qtng wstng wtr wth ncssry s. Whr d y vn cmpr drnkng wtr t wstng t by "pntng" th hs?

Yr nlgy s wk nd flwd.

The problem isnt the water per se. It will, eventually, return to liquid form, in the vicinity it was used. The problem is the amount of energy you waste to CLEAN and TREAT the water.
You are not giving your child some river water you just picked up in a bucket, it didnt come from a well. You are opening the tap and wasting clean water that cost energy to be supplied. LOTS of energy.
And, come on, when you live in a 6 billion population, even your "small" use of water counts. If everyone though that their share "is minimum, wont impact anything", nothing will EVER change. We live in the decimals age, everything to the right of the coma counts. 0,01% counts, damnit!

And Cory@9: dont you think that you are being a little shortsighted? First of all, a bucket of "untreated" water isnt a bucket of germs and diseases churning and bubbling, waiting for your poor child to feast on them. It wont make your child flush the toilet a gazillion times. Lets not stretch the argument that far cause it becomes unreasonable. Thats way to much paranoia for a healthy exchange of ideas.

The point here is not to crucify the kid and his small bucket of clean, pristine water. The point here is a change of conscience. The point here is to understand thats its NOT ok to waste. Waste anything, be it water, be it papers, metal, plastic, be it food, whatever.
So, no, i cannot accept that a information hub like boingboing points as nice and fair that you give your children CLEAN water to waste, be it a pool, be it a teaspoon. Its a matter of responsibility, one that should be taken very seriously when you understand that you became a media/information output.

The saddest part is that this kind of answer ("my actions are tiny, its just a fraction of a kiddies pool") is the default excuse used to lighten the waster conscience, and it WONT WORK, not on the long run, not on the not so long run, not on the short run.
When i read this looooong list of counter arguments, like @14, i really think that you are a bunch of crazy wackos up north. No one here advocates an Arakis lifestyle, theres no need to put, side by side, the wrongs of wasting clean water on childs play and your right to gave your infant a good bath. If your only way to deny my point is to stretch your argument to the end of the spectrum, and state that i´m against all water uses, that i´m a despot of the water, that under my rule no one would be able to even wash their faces, well, i must say that you dont have a point at all.

OK - everyone who says this is bad for the environment, STFU and don't come back until you've sold your car and all of your electrical appliances.

Really, get a life, will you?

I saw people painting calligraphy with water in Pekin a few years ago:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimoconnell/54428975/

Very cool stuff.

Cory@14

Should I install a cistern for unused sippee cup water to use on watering the houseplants?

Well, not for sippee cup water--but an old-fashioned rain barrel can be an excellent source of water for non-edible plants. (If you're planning to use the water for something you're going to eat, you need to check the roofing materials to ensure there's no toxic chemicals that might leach out.) Not to mention cutting back on the water bill.

Your equating wasting water with necessary use.

And you're equating "use for play" with "unnecessary use" -- as are the rest of the hairshirts here.

Play is as necessary to child development as food or drinking water. A bucket of water for that is a pretty good deal. Any person who thinks otherwise gets to handle the low-function sociopaths his strategy produces as punishment.

(from Futurama) Chief Giant Brain: Tom Sawyer, you tricked me. This is less fun than previously indicated. Let this corny slice of Americana be your tomb for all eternity.

Shockingly, in quite a few places in the world we don't need to clean and treat the water. It comes pretty pure out of the ground.

The downside is the relative lack of sunny warm days to use the water for such activities.

mn...
y gys rlly r ncpbl f thnkng t f yr tny snd bx

You have to be an eco-freak-hermit to stop wasting water, Jim@19?
If you dont give your child a bucket of water to play, they will become sociopaths, Paul@21?

Its staggering how you jump to conclusions and stretch the arguments so you can make a point.
The world isnt binary, there are tons of shades of gray between the black and white. You can be eco conscious without having to use hemp ponchos and without becoming a Luddite.

I think the conservation methods Cory and some others should adopt are "don't feed the trolls."

My fiance's friend somehow convinced her toddler daughter that ice cubes were 'treats,' presumably because she enjoyed the sensation. Maybe it was a teething leftover, who knows? But her little one would ask for treats and mom would give her fun-shaped ice cubes from some of those novelty silicone ice trays you can buy in most department stores.

Zombie obviously started his life cycle as an undead by eating his own brain first.

I never heard of this 'water painting' before today. It definitely sounds like something invented before the usual 'sitting your kid in front of a tv for a few hours' activity which gets overused.

I think if someone was really passionate about ridding the world of thirsty people then their priorities would revolve around that goal. He or she wouldn't argue on the internet about it. I'm pretty sure those thirsty people don't have personal computers or internet connections either, maybe you should conserve bandwidth for them by staying off the internet.

Good grief. Someone actually complained about giving a kid a bucket of water to play with. Wow.

i dont know what you consider to be a forum troll, Don@25, but as far as i can see, this is a clash of principles/ideas, not a childish exchange of bad names, so, there are no trolls here, just people with different points of view.

I'm going to go flush the toilet once for every person who complained about the water this activity wastes.

@MHY,

Trolls aren't just people who childishly insult others, they're also those who push their views in everyone's faces when noone else cares and who keep arguing when it's clear that there's no point. Basically anyone who's really really annoying.

As an example take that right wing christian nut we had on here a while back, can't remember his name, he didn't actually insult anyone personally (although his views on a lot of things were insulting) but his relentless carping on and on and on and on and on about how wrong everyone was marked him as a troll.

I'll stop feeding the trolls now :)

...okay, no, I'm not really off flushing the toilet. But, really, think, people!

It takes resources to entertain a child. Even if you ride your bikes to the park four afternoons a week, there'll be days when they're stuck inside watching TV, burning electricity; or when you drive them to the movies, burning gas; or when you give them fingerpaints to play with, wasting paper — and, for that matter, wasting more than a gallon of water in cleanup.

Yes, I'm sure some of you live in harmony with the environment, subsisting on only hand-nurtured alfalfa sprouts and drinking only dewdrops, and you personally might be too mortified to give your kids a gallon of water to play with. But don't snipe at those who do — unless you're also going to get your hackles up over every fun activity that requires kids to wash their hands afterwards, or take a bath afterwards, or do laundry afterwards — unless you're going to complain when people boil pasta for their kids instead of making them eat something that doesn't "waste" water. Don't let the theoretics of conservation overwhelm the basic mathematics of raising a child.

There's a lot of ludicrous ideas being thrown around here, so I just want to pop in and say that if you are complaining about the use of a gallon of water (not a hose) for half a day's worth of entertainment, you had better NEVER take a shower OR a bath. A shower requires approximately 5 gallons of water per minute, and a bath requires approximately 40 gallons of water.

In order to attain your zealous level of water conservation, the only way to get clean would be to use a gallon of water and have your kid paint you with it.

Oh, and my reference:
http://www.wssc.dst.md.us/service/WaterUsageChart.cfm

...Yeah.

I live in a drought-ridden part of the South and the only thing is, we can't run the hose except on Wednesday and Saturday evenings between 5-8 PM. A bucket of water you can fill up from the sink inside.

So yeah. No running through the sprinklers except for an hour two days a week, no washing the car, and I'm using greywater to irrigate the garden (not hard -- stick a bucket in the shower with you, pour it on the plants). You can't give the kids the hose and tell them to spray off the house. But a couple gallons in a bucket for a kid to play with is not a problem.

when i was a kid i used a super soaker to graffiti all over the outside of the house, safe in the knowledge that all those rude words and drawings of boobs would be gone by the time my parents came looking. rebellion-lite :D

and to all those people complaining about wasting water, every time you flush the toilet, you use up to 13 litres of water or a bucket and a half.

guess the shit piles up in your house

@FAUSTUS

ah... ok
i dont agree with you, you dont care about me, so i´m a troll

good to know, cause to me, trolling meant something else other than ideas being challenged in a coherent way (emphasis on coherent).
I will go back to my oh-so-dry troll cave now, sorry for the inconvenience, i wont smear your eyes with my really really really annoying points of view.

*do you hear our dear Murdoch joyfully lightning firecrackers? After all, its not everyday that you can party to the sound of human dialog being crushed under blind, teeth-baring denial*

We didn't have water when I was a kid. We had to play with oats.

My God, people. Nothing about the description says that it has to be "treated, clean water". Just dip a gallon out of your rain barrel. You all do have rain barrels, right?

dn't thnk th wtr s s sch bg dl, bt Cry's rnts r rrttng. t mks m wnt t skp vr mst f wht h psts. Dd nds t r-f'n-lx.

The protests over this waste of water and resources has touched me deeply. I just filled a plastic milk jug with a gallon of tap water and will be mailing it to an African child.

I moistened the stamps with three day old coffee that was sitting in the styrofoam cup on my desk, to save water.

How much CO2 belching coal was burned to power this fun debate?

If you are really worrying about a bucket of water, you shouldn't have your computer on reading blogs.

Zombie and MHY,

Perhaps you should work on conserving bile. You've hurled more than a bucketful in this thread. Why don't you channel some of that anger into real conservation issues?

I'm so glad I don't have kids.

You know, every time you send a message to this blog, you consume a discretionary energy resource, generate carbon, etc.

It's the height of hypocrisy to assert YOUR right to expend discretionary energy resources, but to demand that everyone else limit themselves to only the barest survival rations.

Oh! I like #43.

Seriously, anyone who is complaining about a child using a bucket of water to paint a house and the sidewalk better not own a car.
Or breed.
Or ever eat a morsel of meat.
Or ingest any product with any corn derivative in it.

Also, they should restrict themselves to living in areas of the globe with constant rainfall.
They should not have a lawn or a garden except a "dry garden" of indigenous plants that never need tending.

Finally, they should learn just to get their fiber and protein from eating tree bark and insects. Really, that diet worked for the Khmer Rouge. Urine (one's own and that of others) can also be drunk for immediate rehydrating pleasure.

"The protests over this waste of water and resources has touched me deeply. I just filled a plastic milk jug with a gallon of tap water and will be mailing it to an African child."

Ah but Korpo, you just made me waste water, it came squirting out my nose when I foolishly tried to drink from a glass of water and read your post at the same time.

Or maybe it wasn't wasted, maybe it was an involuntary neti treatment.

If you dont give your child a bucket of water to play, they will become sociopaths, Paul

If you don't give your child a bucket or water or any other ways to play with that require more resources than a bucket of water, then yeah.

On the other hand, if you let them use them but not the bucket, then you're just being a party-pooper in the name of an environment you're not actually protecting.

h Cry...
y fld t ndrstnd my pnt, nd y fl whn y cmpr my cll t chng n yr prdgms hypcrsy.
Nt t mntn th ttr (hn... hw cn pt t wtht gttng th N-VWLS trtmnt?) dnsty f th thr nswrs tht wnt lk "gt rd f yr lctrncs f y r s clgcl" r "whn y s ths frm y wst nrgy, s wh r y t spk bt wtr mss".
Thts pthtc. N, rlly. Blck nd wht pthtc, bnry pthtc. DMB pthtc, f y llw m th ptty mth (h, th hmnty! lt m kp my vwls! prtty pls wth sgr n tp)
nvr sd tht y cldnt lt yr chldrn ply wth wtr nd nt n wrd cm t f my fngrs tht ssrtd my rghts vr thrs. My pnt ws, nd s, prtty smpl; dn´t wst trtd wtr, kpng n mnd tht vry lttl ctn hlps. Dn´t ncrg wtr mss, mr s f y wrt n blg wth hg rdrshp.
nd ndrstnd tht th dffrnc, th RL dffrnc, r md trgh smll cts. Mcr nd mcr, pwrd, frm th bttm p, nt th thr wy rnd.
n thr, smplr wrds, strt trnng ff th tp whn y r brshng yr tth, nd sclt frm thr.

n tm, jst gt t f my dry trll cv cs ws clld n hypcrt ( gss t ws m, snc Zmb wnt bck t th grvyrd nd kpt hs slnt)
ws brng wll th srcsm brrg, bt ´m n hypcrt, sr.

Nw, f nyn hr hs smthng t sy bt wht wrt n th thrs psts, brng t n, ´m mr thn wllng t dbt, bt f th nly nswr y cn prvd s smplstc rny, lw qlty jks nd gnrl sycphntc blbbng, wll g bck t my trllsh shdws wr dnt stmp n yr snsblts, k?

Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.

oh well, the old no vowels treatment.
thats what i get for trying to reason after being called an hypocrite.

its a shame, but this is not my site, so, who am i to complain? ;)

(now, to save your time, the no-vowels version)
h wll, th ld n vwls trtment.
thts wht gt fr trng to rsn ftr bng clld n hpcrt.

ts shme, bt ths s nt m st, s, wh m t cmpln? ;)

--

BTW, have you noticed that it doesnt suppress the Ys, even if they are vowels? My version of the text fix this bug.

MHY,

You were disemvowelled for being rude. Being passive aggressive isn't going to help you. Take your anger someplace where it can do some good.

ANTINOUS

I really didnt mean to be rude, i was just tunning my speech to things like "guess the shit pile up in your house". Talk about passive-aggressiveness...
My arguments were simple and sound, and i even kept my silent until i was called an hypocrite, but it seems that my answer to that was also "rude" (at least the one supposed to read it did so, before disemvowelling it).

anyway, as i said, this isnt my site, i have no rights to dictate rules here, and i wont throw a fit if you cannot handle my rhetoric. I´m an adult that can handle frustration, and i wont die cause you people disagree with my beliefs.

that said, now i know where i stand here, in boingboing comments, and i dont plan to make the same mistake again. I will save my thoughts to a place were it can be digested without hurting anyone sensibilities. No hard feelings, really.

I'm so glad BB is censoring comments it doesn't like. Makes for such a great reading experience.

Chris: It makes for a better reading experience than an unmoderated forum, as anyone who watched Usenet's long slow slide into pointlessness can tell you. BoingBoing's mod policy is linked in the right sidebar; you can read all about it there.

MHY: I can see the word "pathetic" in your disemvowelled post. At a guess, I'd say it's words like that that got you disemvowelled, not your unpopular positions. Plank, eye, etc.

JERE7MY

yes, i did write pathetic, as i wrote "sycophantic blabbing", "low quality jokes" and "simplistic irony", among other things. But, as i said, i was tunning to the "shit pilling up in my house" (the post is up there, with all its vowels), among other assumptions about my life (not about what i said).

It seems that there are two measures and two weights here, it depends on the humor of the moderator, but i already made my point about that and said i would abide to the rules.

So, lemme wrap my fingers together, tightly, so i stop wasting yours and my time here.
(sometimes, putting a harness on our Id is very, very hard ;))

Cory- you made my day; those rants were so inspired and on-target that I might need to read your books now. (Where can I find them?)

Have you written one yet about a dystopian eco-paradise where the skies are clear and the food is great, but where play is shameful and the omnipresent carbon-counting nebbishes scrutinize everyone's personal choices for their gaiac synergy? If not, you're off to a great start. Keep going!

Check out Treehugger's comments if you really want to see some rampant armchair eco-accounting. Sometimes it's obvious when posters have no children. At least not ones that get to have fun.

*splashes*

Ah yes, the moment I read the post title I knew violent protest would ensue. You've all made my day today. What terrific hilarity.

Your right. Clean water is too important to waste. Since I live in a suburb and don't have a rain barrel (can you believe my apartment community doesn't allow barrels of fetid mosquito breeding water on our porch??) or any other readily available supply of untreated water I think I'll jump in the SUV and drive down to the nearest river to pick some up. Thanks for the tip!

Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.

*dies laughing*

So anyway back to the topic, there's an exhibition on at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne at the moment that features the video work of Latin American artists.

http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/resonantvisions/

One of the artists featured, Óscar Muñoz, paints portraits with water on hot concrete. Have a look here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEuVv0K10kw

Fun post Cory =)

I appreciate being reminded of things from my childhood - as an expectant parent, it's great to file these things away for the near future! I remember loving the mini super-soaker that I painted my house with until my parents caught me, and realized I was making lasting marks in the dirt on our house. Ah well, it motivated them to clean it!

As for ZOMBIE and MHY, I consider you both hopelessly serious people with poorly considered opinions regarding the issues of water conservation. I grew up on well water, appreciating the value of a productive, healthy aquifer. Your time would be much better spent campaigning to limit building height & weight maximums in cities, in order to save the aquifer. Or promoting general conservation in manufacturing. Or policing businesses who store dangerous chemicals outdoors and allow rain runoff to contaminate massive areas.

You should already understand that the biggest threats to our water systems don't come from over-use by residential customers. If you didn't know that, take a little time to self-educate before coming here to annoy people with your ignorance :)

You know, you only need a quart of water for this kind of fun (we got water in cottage cheese cartons, paint brushes, no hoses allowed).
Try drawing fast enough to get a picture before it disappears.

We used to do this all the time when we were kids. It was great fun.
I guess Zombie would have a fit if I talked about the block-wide water fights we used to have.

Sometimes I just come here to read the comments of the one or two retards who deliberately provoke flaming cos they believe they've found an almost criminally negligent flaw with a simple idea. Most entertaining indeed - not always but sometimes worth more than a quick scan.

I love whomever it was who said 'ohh kids, let's 'paint' the windows, kitchen floor and use the lawnmower to 'paint' the lawn too'!. At least that user has a sense of humour.

Many of you are very passionate about the environment, which is good, but not very informed about relative environmental impact, which can be dangerous. The environment is what I do all day every day, and I can reliably tell you a child playing with a single gallon of water uses far less resources than an afternoon of just about any other kind of recreational activity. Here is a list of everyday actions that would do more environmental damage than a kid playing with a gallon of water for a day:

* Eating a ham sandwich instead of a PB and J.

* Flushing the toilet twice if the first time doesn't work.

* Spending 30 seconds in the shower

* Using Google for 10 minutes.

* Leaving your hot-water boiler on for a single night.

* Adjusting the thermostat by 1 degree for 1 hour.

* Driving with under-inflated tires for a week.

The environment will be the most serious issue of our lives, and we cannot afford to focus our time and environmental attention (truly our two most precious resources) on such trivial and relatively benign behaviours such as whether a child can play with a gallon of water for a day -- we have much more urgent concerns that need our attention.

First, I would like to ask boingboing readers if they believe whether or not the critics of this article are necessarily wrong if they are also wasteful, i.e. if Zombie is wasteful with natural resources, does that mean that his or her argument not to waste water is necessarily invalid?

Second, I would also like to say that I think this site is characterized by not only "wonderful things" but also a more nurturing or hospitable community, you know, like people being mature enough to refrain from nitpicking people for their spelling or subject-verb agreement (I mention that because mine might be a bit objectionable right now ... margaritas aren't conducive to coherent writing). As an extension of that maturity, might we also opt to phrase our criticism of a post or idea productively? I think it's better for not only boingboing but also ... well, all of us to try to express ourselves tentatively and assuming first that our peers mean well.

Frankly, my first reaction to this post was to find the suggestion endearing and then to wonder if it might be a bad idea in California right now, but I would never have had the impulse to respond with "WOW, THAT'D BE A GREAT IDEA IF IT DIDN'T SUCK SO MUCH." Until we know for certain that this particular activity entails a greater cost than most of the alternatives parents would select for our children, I personally don't feel comfortable knocking it.

I might have just wasted my buzz and my time, but thanks to everyone anyway.