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Happy New Year December 31, 2004
Happy New Year to everyone. This year, for the first time I can remember, we're staying home for New Year's Eve. We can't exactly pack Sam up and take her out with us, and we waited too long to look for a sitter. It's just as well. I'm already tired.
Now for some meaningless statistics. In 2004, I:
- Made 247 posts on this blog
- Got 342 comments on those posts
- Posted 653 pictures of Samantha (woah...)
- Read 47 books
- Played 34 video games, many of them violent
- Watched 43 movies/DVDs
- Wrote 12 game reviews/previews for GameSpy.com
- Made 1,267 posts on the Quarter to Three forums
- Had one daughter (well, Ger technicall "had" her, but you know what I mean)
- Guest lectured twice in graduate-level classes at Alliant University
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Happy New Year's Eve. We caught Sam toasting to 2004, which has been the best year of her life. (Don't worry, we watered down the champaign.)
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But the concept, which basically says that it's important to understand and appreciate the emotions of others and yourself, has gotten quite a foothold and I thought it was time I actually read something about it before forming an opinion.
From Amazon:
There was a time when IQ was considered the leading determinant of success. In this fascinating book, based on brain and behavioral research, Daniel Goleman argues that our IQ-idolizing view of intelligence is far too narrow. Instead, Goleman makes the case for "emotional intelligence" being the strongest indicator of human success. He defines emotional intelligence in terms of self-awareness, altruism, personal motivation, empathy, and the ability to love and be loved by friends, partners, and family members. People who possess high emotional intelligence are the people who truly succeed in work as well as play, building flourishing careers and lasting, meaningful relationships. Because emotional intelligence isn't fixed at birth, Goleman outlines how adults as well as parents of young children can sow the seeds.
I'm actually about a third of the way through the book as I write this, and I'm unimpressed so far. It smacks of sensationalism the way it starts off (and continues) with the use of horror stories about emotions gone awry in domestic abuse and nightclub killings. It also overextends itself in its critique of traditional IQ testing, relying on the tautology that since IQ (or g, or general mental ability ) doesn't predict everything 100% of the time that it's useless and ripe for displacement by something newer, sexier, and fuzzier. I imagine that my opinion after reading this will be the same as before: "Sounds possible, but call me back when you've got more science and less sensation."
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Notice what's missing from the little wooden train next to Sam. Now, what do you think she's got in her mouth?
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Well, okay I'm not. I'm actually sitting on the living room floor, but I could be doing it from the bathroom or just about any other room in the house. My sister and brother-in-law gave me a wireless router for Christmas and I got it up and running last night. It was ridiculously easy to get working, but on the down side it has resulted in a new "No Internet at the dinner table" rule, which wasn't really ever an issue before.
I'm actually kind of surprised it's taken me this long to get a wireless network set up while so many other more technologically challenged individuals have been reaping the wireless rewards for so long. My dad, who is older than I am, already had one for crying out loud. But I love it, and I already have plans to expand my little wireless empire. I'll pick up another card for my old desktop machine, of course, but I also want to get a USB adapter so that I can wirelessly network my TiVo. Once this is done, I can easily control my season passes and recordings through a web interface from anywhere on the planet. I'll also be able to stream music and pictures from my upstairs computer to my television.
How have I survived this long without these wonders?
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Ger's mom regularly prints out pictures of Sam from this website and puts them up everywhere. The top of the television, however seems to be a favorite spot. Hey, Joan, if you're reading this you should print off this picture and put it on top of the TV. That would be trippy.
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Looks like my host has decided to nuke the Movable Type commenting system on my site (and others) because they were getting pounded by comment spammers. This means you can't leave comments at the moment, though you can always e-mail me.I wondered why things were so quiet. I'm going to complain to my host tomorrow and maybe upgrade to the new version of Movable Type over the long weekend. Hopefully they'll turn it back on soon.
Fricking comment spammers. Right now I'm concentrating very hard and giving them cancer with my mind!
UPDATE: Comments are kind of back. I upgraded to Movable Type v3.14, but for some reason it's forcing me to manually approve each comment. I'll try to fix that, but in the meantime you can go ahead and comment. You'll just have to wait for me to notice and approve it before it appears.
UPDATE: Okay, I got the kinks worked out. Thanks to Joost for his help! On his day off, even. Comments are now working correctly, and I've got the new version of MT-Blacklist installed to boot.
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Geez, where to start? The holiday, I guess. At 11 months old, we really weren't sure if Sam would be old enough to enjoy her first Christmas. Boy were we wrong. We three opened our gifts to each other and from my family on Tuesday night before leaving for St. Louis, and Sam got into it. At first she seemed to think it was just a chance to rip up paper, but soon the gifts started piling up and she was laughing and flapping her arms so hard I thought she was going to pass out. The new toys infatuated her, but her favorite thing turned out to be romping through the wrapping paper. Also, there were bubbles.
And as expected, Sam made out like a little, incontinent bandit. Clothes, books, and more from Nana and Grandpa Madigan, leather slippers and toys from Aunt Shawn and Uncle Brent, and toys toys toys from Mom and Dad. And on Christmas morning the giving kept on going with more toys and a toddler-sized car seat from Grandma and Grandpa Sommer. I, on the other hand, got an electric nose hair trimmer.
(Actually, I'm being unfair for the sake of a joke. I got lots of great geek toys --more than I deserve-- which I'll talk about another time.)
Sam and I gave Ger something I think is kind of neat: a picture frame with four pics of Sam in it. The pictures are black and white, except for one object, which is in color. It's even more saccharin sweet than the Christmas Card we sent out.
I also have to pause a moment and comment on one of the books that Nana gave Sam. It's called "I am a BABY!". Not "I'm a baby" or even "I am a baby." No, the book boldly declares that "I am a BABY!" For some reason this totally cracked me up, as I kept putting "By Ayn Rand" at the end and imagining opening it up to find pictures of pudgy little babies bucking society's conventions and removing the twin yokes of tradition and organized religion. Then crapping themselves. As you can see, it has already caused the light bulbs in Sam's little head to go off.
Anyway. Wednesday morning we got on a plane and flew to St. Louis to visit Ger's family. Sam did fine on the flight. On Christmas Eve they had their big family gathering, and Sam was, appropriately, the center of attention in her new Christmas dress. Which Geralyn bought despite the fact that she would only ever wear it once in the history of mankind. Sam made the rounds with the rest of the family until I came back from getting an appetizer to find her drinking a Busch Light, smoking a cigar, and rolling her eyes at every mention of that awful Bill Clinton. I think she was chewing on some communion wafers, too. Yes, this is the dominant composite image I have of Ger's family, and I love each and every one of them.
Let's pause for some pictures, of which there are many. More update after that.
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Done clicking? Good.
Christmas night brought slightly classier festivities when Ger's godparents took us to the St. Louis Club for the annual Christmas feast. Now, the St. Louis Club is pretty ritzy. I had to wear a tie and they don't serve nachos. Also, if a waiter offends you I think you can have him killed. By lions. Sam wore her other Christmas dress, which Ger also bought, despite the fact that Sam would only ever wear it once in the history of mankind. And no, before you ask, she couldn't have just worn the first dress again. What are you, stupid for even asking?
Sam was the only baby in the whole place, but she did well and got to sample all kinds of stuff from the buffet: smoked salmon, grilled vegetables, Jell-O, fresh-baked breads, and fruits. Apparently, though, she thinks fresh raspberries and cream is the most vile culinary abomination ever. No accounting for taste, I guess.
Our time between parties was usually spent just kind of lounging around the house, playing with our new toys. Or in Sam's case, some really old toys. Ger's parents unearthed some of her old Playskool Blocks for Sam to play with. These are just awesome wooden blocks of various sizes that you can build with. They don't appear to be made any more, probably because they killed some kid by not being tied in with a cartoon or movie. But Sam loved them. Specifically, she loved knocking down whatever I build out of them, as shown in this time-lapsed photography:
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In the third picture, imagine her squealing in triumph just before throwing down the final bones of my creation. She's been reading too much "I am a BABY!" I think.
I'm probably forgetting a ton of stuff, but I'll just have to make separate posts about it later after I remember it. I'll also post more pictures from the Seliga Christmas party and our dinner at the St. Louis Club.
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Sam in her new hat and sweater, meant to ward off the freakishly intense cold in St. Louis over the Christmas weekend.
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We're back from our Christmas trip to St. Louis. I'm going to write up a detailed account, but I need a half day to recharge first.
I will say, though, that it was freaking COLD in St. Louis. It was the kind of cold that when you get out of your car it punches you right in the face, then runs after you slapping your cheeks and pinching your ears as you sprint across the parking lot and yelp for mercy. Once you're inside to wherever you're going, it just stands back there on the other side of the automatic doors and points at you, mouthing "I know you have to come back out here. And when you do, you're mine, California boy." It then bares its pearly white teeth and paces back and forth until you have to go back out and dash for the car again.
At least it couldn't follow us back home to San Diego. Thank goodness.
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I started this series well over a year ago, and despite how much I've enjoyed it, it's taken me quite some time to get around to this final volume and finish it off. I'll actually be pretty glad to be done with it.
From Amazon:
With Sea of Silver Light, Tad Williams completes his massive Otherland quartet, one of SF's more intriguing explorations of the eroding boundaries of the human and the nonhuman, the living and the dead. Otherland is a sequence that contains many secrets, and Williams plays fair by unpacking all of them in the final book. A group of adventurers searching for a cure for comatose children find themselves trapped in a sequence of virtual worlds, the only opponents of a conspiracy of the rich to live forever in a dream. Now, they are forced to make an uneasy alliance with their only surviving former enemy against his treacherous sidekick Johnny Wulgaru, a serial killer with a chance to play God forever.
Williams manages a vast cast of emotionally involving characters with considerable panache, but the real strength of the book is its endlessly questing intelligence; it is, among other things, an enquiry into the nature of storytelling as a way for human beings to give structure to their perceptions of the universe around them. It is as story that Sea of Silver Light ultimately works so well--involving us in the grueling descent of a vast mountain, the siege of an underground fortress, gun battles in a nightmare Wild West. Williams never neglects to tell us how things feel. He efficiently ties up every plot strand and convincingly reveals every secret in this large, complex plot.
I think that I may try out Williams's high fantasy stuff, like the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series.
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Sam's set of Pooh Bear tea party toys. I like how you can see Sam and Ger's legs in the mirror at the top of this picture.
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For some reason, Sam has developed a reverse mullet hairdo. Long in the bangs, short in the back.
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Sam checking out her new Christmas toy. It's a lime green plush car! Just what she always wanted!
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One of Sammy's favorite things it to take things out of other things. We keep all her toys in these wicker baskets, which she delights in emptying. We're still trying to teach her to put things in them.
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Sam playing with "Buzz Buzz," the toy that used to be attached to her playgym. We recently disassembled it since Sam hasn't played under it for quite some time. But she still likes the rattles and toys that came with it.
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This is an older pic, but I was playing around with colorization and thought it turned out good enough to include as a pic of the day. Sam thought it was absolutely hysterical when I put her rings between my teeth.
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Yep, this year we became one of those families that puts pictures of its kid on its Christmas Cards. It's a bizarre insanity to which we were not immune, and we make no apologies:
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Click for a larger version. Hope you have a great holiday season!
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Let's face it, Santa can be kind of creepy, especially for kids. He's a loud, strange man with a partially obscured face. He wants you to sit on his lap and tell him secrets. He may reek of gin. I guess that's why this photo gallery cracks me up so much. It's full of children being mortally terrified of Santa, like this one:
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I mean, look at that one. He is scary looking! I'm almost glad we didn't get around to having Sam's picture made with the Jolly Holiday Horror this year. The thing is, I kind of remember seeing a picture of me and Santa that would have been perfectly appropriate for this collection. I wish I could find it.
Anyway, check out the gallery. If you don't laugh at least a little, you may be well adjusted.
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Sammy the good little napper.
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Ug, sick again. I'm not sure if this is the same thing Sam has had for the last week or so, or if she just smoothly transitioned from one malady to another, lubricated as she was with phlegm. And I'm sick too, so I have to say that the guy from Trixie Update had the right of it, though, when he identified Baby-related Immune Deficiency Syndrome (BIDS) as the reason why. Kids make you sick and then don't let you rest to get better. They're like little breeding grounds for germs, and I'm pretty sure that Sam crawls downstairs in the middle of the night to cough in all our drinking glasses.
The thing is, Sam isn't acting sick. She's generally happy and has learned a few new tricks this week. Sam is a long-time fan of taking things out of other things and then complaining that there's nothing left to take out of anything. She'll sit in front of her basket of toys and take them out one by one until it was empty and then look at us as if to say "Hey, I'm out of stuff. fix this!". This week she actually learned the joys of putting them back in the basket, which excites us because it's a prelude to cleaning up after herself. And the next step after that is getting a job. The really cute thing, though, is that she's learned to take the shapes out of her shape sorter bucket and hand them to us. She'll do this for up to ten minutes at a time, just pulling the shapes out, handing them to us, and making a sound like "dis!" each time she gives us one. As in "Take dis! And be happy with my cast-offs."
Speaking of words, one of the big milestones everyone wants to know about is her first word. I think it's pretty safe to say that Sam now has a few words in her vocabulary if you know how to listen for them. She says "Ma-ma-ma" when she wants Ger, and "Dad" for me. She'll point at the cat and say "gat!" pretty consistently, and the bathtub is "bed," probably because every night we say "Okay, time for bed" and promptly place her in the tub. I'm pretty sure she'll miss that one on the Vocabulary section of the SATs. Finally, she often points northeast and says "Quebec!" even though she's really pointing more at Manitoba.
Cruising is her other big milestone for the week. For the baby illiterate among you, cruising is when babies walk around by leaning on something (furniture, the wall, the cat) for support. She will also take little steps if I hold her up and gibber like an idiot right in her face. So the mobility is ever increasing, as are my fears that she's going to drink a bottle of flaming bleach the second I turn my back.
So yeah, pictures:
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One day last week Ger gave Sam a little cookie biscuit thing. As a special bonus, I present you with "Destruction of a Cookie" below:
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Dramatic, wasn't it? You can really smell the pathos. We're heading to St. Louis for Christmas this week, so Sam's update will probably be delayed a day or two. Have a Merry one yourself.
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Me and Sam in front of a fountain in Balboa Park.
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Ger's parents gave us this nice advent calendar. It's got 25 places for 25 little porcalin ornaments, and the idea is that you put one up each day of December until you get to Christmas. Each night we've been placing the tray of ornaments in front of Sam and letting her pick one to hang up. She seems to take this job very seriously.
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Look, if giving your 11-month old daughter a miniature bottle of Crown Royal is bad, then ...well, crap.
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This thing is awesome. More than once I've felt the urge to get a bushel of apples, slice them all with this instrument of fruity destruction, and build a little log cabin from the cylindrical cores it leaves behind.
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We used to bathe Sam in one of those little plastic tubs that you placed inside the bath tub. She has recently outgrown it, though, so we graduated her up. It takes more water and we have to watch her more closely, butshe can now fit ALL her toys in with her.
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"Oh, hello. I didn't see you there. I was just standing here looking fashionable in my pink overalls and pink leather slippers from Aunt Shawn. Please, come in and make yourself comfortable."
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I had a light lunch, so around mid-afternoon today I wanted a snack. Specifically, I wanted a bag of Doritos. Mmmm... Crunchy, salty, fake-cheese smelling, and covered in that orange powder. Just so. With this in mind, I embarked on a quest that turned out to be more epic and tragic than I expected.
I went to the downstairs break room and looked at the vending machine. There were no Doritos. Ruffles, Cheese-its, and Fritos, but no Doritos. So I walked back down the length of the building, up the stairs, and back down the length of the building to the upstairs vending machines. Here in the vending machine was an embarrassment of Doritos riches. Both Nacho Cheese and Cool Ranch! Multiple bags! I whipped out my wallet and ...found only a ten dollar bill. The vending machine would not take a ten dollar bill. Groaning, I walked back down the length of the building, down the stairs, and back to my desk.
Once there, I fished around in my desk, my drawers, my pockets, and that old GameSpy coffee cup where I keep my spare change. And by "spare change" I mean "about a billion pennies." The vending machine, however, doesn't take pennies any more than it takes ten dollar bills. I think that's ironic or something. At any rate, I managed to scrounge up 75 cents in the form of six nickels, two dimes, and a quarter half covered in a mysterious green crust. So armed, I walked back down the length of the building, up the stairs, and back down the length of the building to the upstairs break room again.
Once there, I inserted the coins, listening to the satisfying KA-CHUNK! as they went in and watching the red numbers on the vending machine's display count up towards the price of my snacktastic prize. When I tried to put in the crusty green quarter, however, there was a different KA-CHUNK! sound, one immediately followed by the shrill CHING! sound of my coin being returned to me in the return coin slot. I tried again and again, but the machine apparently didn't like the mystery crust attached to my legal tender. Worse, the return change button responded to neither my pounding nor my cursing.
Normal men may have given up at this point, but I'm abnormal. I stomped down the length of the building, down the stairs, and back down the length of the building to the front door. I walked over to the cafeteria and demanded change for my ten dollar bill. I know I could have just bought Doritos from the cafeteria, but at this point is was a matter of principle. Plus the dang vending machine already had $.50 of my money it wasn't giving back. So I got my change, marched back to my building, went through the front door, walked up the length of the building to the stairs, went up the stairs, and walked down the length of the building to the vending machine. I inserted my change, decided on the Cool Ranch flavor, and triumphantly jabbed "B-6" into the keypad to select my snack.
No! Wait! A-6, not B-6. A-6! No! Not the Rolled Gold Pretzels! NO! NOOOO!
Clunk.
So now I sit here writing this, a half-eaten bag of pretzels testament to my hubris or something. Actually, they're not all that bad. I just need a Diet Coke to wash them down...
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My review of The Chronicles of Riddick - Escape from Butcher Bay went up today at GameSpy.com. Said the quote monkey:
It was a suprisingly good game, even if it was a bit short and had only a limited palate of weapons and environments. The stealth game was fun if you suspended disbelief about a few things. Namely, if I ever build a futuristic penal planet, I'm either going to leave out the ventilation ducts or fill them chin deep with scorpions.Wait, wait. I know what you're probably thinking about The Chronicles of Riddick - Escape from Butcher Bay, especially if you didn't pay attention to the Xbox version released earlier this year. Games based on movie licenses are safely ignored by discriminating gamers, I know. That's a good instinct you should go with most of the time, but The Chronicles of Riddick is a rare exception. The folks at Starbreeze Studios based a first-person shooter around a character from a summer popcorn flick, but they also made it a really fun, really polished amalgam of action, RPG, and adventure genres.
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Sam entertained herself for like 5 straight minutes by jingling the keychain attached to the file cabinet here. That's an eternity in baby attention span years.
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Sammy's still a bit sick. I'm not sure if this is the same malady as last week or if she just smoothly transitioned from one to another, but either way it's not as severe. She actually doesn't appear to feel ill most of the time, but her head is full of snot. A few times a day we pin her down, spray saline up each nostril, and suck out three cups of mucus with one of those rubber ball sucker thingies. The gunk is really unlike anything I've ever seen, it's so viscous. It hangs together in thick white ropes, and once when Sammy rubbed the back of her hand across some before I could wipe it away she strung it all over herself like tinsel on a tree. 'Tis the season.
Speaking of which, with the addition of Sam to our little cabal, Ger and I have decided to become one of those couples that sends out Christmas cards with pictures of our baby on them. As one of Ger's friends once said of receiving pictures of babies in the mail, this presents people with a conundrum --what do you do with it? It's a picture of a baby. You can't throw it out with the Penny Saver and the J.Crew catalogs. That would be cruel and you'd feel guilty forever. So you put it on your shelf or attach it to the refridgerator with magnets, where it sits for months until you finally say okay I barely know this kid and I haven't seen the Madigans since college I'm going to throw the baby in the trash. But you can't. So it sits there for a few more weeks while you work up the last of the inhumanity required for the deed. I take perverted pleasure in all this, so look for your card soon.
In fact, here's a scan of the cards that we came up with:
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Oh, relax, people. She's fine, see? Also, that's not really our card. The real one features more mucus.
On the development front, Sam has spent another week of perfecting her current tricks rather than breaking into new material. She stands up all the time now, and has gotten tall enough to reach things on the edge of the kitchen table. She has also graduated to a bigger sippy cup that she only throws on the floor half the time. Geralyn also took Sam to the park and put her in one of those swings for the first time. I'm glad she was the one to do it, because those things kind of freak me out. I have this image of my gently placing Sam in one, tapping her on the back, and watching in horror as she sails over the horizon.
Other pictures from this week:
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This picture may kind of weird you out, but don't worry she's not dead. Sam is just demonstrating that even babies don't look cute when photographed at the exact instant they wake up. To compensate for that, here's a picture of Sammy and Daddy under the mistletoe.
I'll end this week's update by telling you a story. There have been in my life a handful of perfect moments. These are the instants that are frozen in my mind with immaculate clarity, moments that boldly testify to why life is good. I had one, for example, when I was leaning against to Geralyn on a cold winter night and thinking about the acceptance letter to a graduate school that would allow me to keep dating her in St. Louis. I had another perfect moment last night. As I said, Sam was a little stuffy and kept waking up, crying. I went in to her and held her against my chest, her head on my shoulder and my chin on hers. I stood there in the dark, shusshing her and rocking my weight from one foot to the other. Sniffle by sniffle, her crying trailed off and she slowly relaxed in my arms. Her muscles unclenched and she let her head rest fully on my shoulder as she went quiet. She was asleep after about five minutes, breathing deeply despite the little whistles coming out of her congested nose. But I couldn't put her down, paralyzed as I was with love and comfort. So I stayed a while longer, rocking her back and forth in the dark. Finally, I lay her back down in her crib and slowly backed away.
And of course, she started crying again. But before that, yeah, it was a perfect moment. She's fricking awesome.
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Congratulations to friends David and Michelle, who just had their first kid over the weekend! Baby Gabriel was born 6 pounds, 11 ounces and 18.5 inches long. He also came out wearing a jaunty Christmas hat.
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Sam's weekly update will be delayed until tomorrow. I'd do it now, but I have to finish a review for GameSpy. If you like, though, you can see the new pictures here to tide you over.
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Sammy in a swing, enjoying the heck out of it.
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Last weekend we drove up near Temecula to visit friends David and Michelle, who I used to work with. They're expecting their first kid soon, so Sam was kind enuogh to demonstrate all the knocking things over that they could look forward to.
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Look, I was aiming for the tree, and Sam just kind of got in the way.
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Yes, okay they work. Now I have to risk my life up on that ladder to actually put them on the house.
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Whee! I had a bit of fun today over my lunch break with a picture of Sam in her frog outfit from Halloween. Click on it for a larger version.
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A version of this is now my new computer desktop wallpaper. If you're a Sam fan I can send you a copy.
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Sammie obviously has features from both of us, but we're not sure where she got her blue eyes --ours are both green.
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I'm going to break my arm patting myself on the back so hard, but I thought I'd share two pieces of good news on the professional front. First, I got two --two!-- submissions accepted to next year's annual Society for Industrial/Organizational Psychology conference. One, entitled "The Importance of Test Administration Characteristics in Forming Applicant Reactions," examines what about pre-employment testing can tick people off when they have to go through it to apply for a job. The second presentation, entitled "Developing an Offline Testing System That Still Benefits from Information Technology," is part of a practitioner forum looking at how information technology has spurred changes in I/O practice, particularly selection. My piece looks at the employment testing infrastructure we designed and use at my current employer. Gripping stuff, eh?
The second piece of news is that I was recently elected to the office of "Vice President - Web Publications" for The Personnel Testing Council of Southern California, a local professional organization for I/O psychologists. And by "elected" I mean "nominated myself and ran unopposed." The position is essentially that of webmaster for their site, but it's managable and should be a great way to meet folks and network.
So, you know. Yay.
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Last picture from Balboa Park. For now. These are roots. Pronounced "ruts" by our hillbilly friends.
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Another picture from Balboa Park. The building there is an awesome botanical garden full of rare tropical plants. Some of them eat people.
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From Amazon:
Of the five contenders for power, one is dead, another in disfavor, and still the wars rage as violently as ever, as alliances are made and broken. Joffrey, of House Lannister, sits on the Iron Throne, the uneasy ruler of the land of the Seven Kingdoms. His most bitter rival, Lord Stannis, stands defeated and disgraced, the victim of the jealous sorceress who holds him in her evil thrall. But young Robb, of House Stark, still rules the North from the fortress of Riverrun. Robb plots against his despised Lannister enemies, even as they hold his sister hostage at King�s Landing, the seat of the Iron Throne. Meanwhile, making her way across a blood-drenched continent is the exiled queen, Daenerys, mistress of the only three dragons still left in the world.
But as opposing forces maneuver for the final titanic showdown, an army of barbaric wildlings arrives from the outermost line of civilization. In their vanguard is a horde of mythical Others--a supernatural army of the living dead whose animated corpses are unstoppable. As the future of the land hangs in the balance, no one will rest until the Seven Kingdoms have exploded in a veritable storm of swords.
After this, the long wait begins, but at least I can move on to some other stuff in the meantime. I can only take high fantasy for so long, even when it's this good.
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From Amazon:
If this one is good I'll have to check out Shermer's other stuff. Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time and How We Believe : Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God.In his third and final investigation into the science of belief, bestselling author Michael Shermer tackles the evolution of morality and ethics.
A century and a half after Darwin first proposed an "evolutionary ethics," science has begun to tackle the roots of morality. Just as evolutionary biologists study why we are hungry (to motivate us to eat) or why sex is enjoyable (to motivate us to procreate), they are now searching for the roots of human nature.
In The Science of Good and Evil, psychologist and science historian Michael Shermer explores how humans evolved from social primates to moral primates, how and why morality motivates the human animal, and how the foundation of moral principles can be built upon empirical evidence. Along the way he explains the im-plications of statistics for fate and free will; fuzzy logic for the existence of pure good and pure evil; and ecology for the development of early moral sentiments among the first humans. As he closes the divide between science and morality, Shermer draws on stories from the Yanamam�, infamously known as the "fierce people" of the tropical rain forest, to the Aum Shinrikyo cult in Japan, to John Hinckley�s insanity defense. The Science of Good and Evil is ultimately a profound look at the moral animal, belief, and the scientific pursuit of truth.
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Did you know? There are palm trees in Southern California! This picture is from a few weeks ago when we went to Balboa Park, an awesome park and set of museums here in San Diego.
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Photography
Sammie's sick. She's almost over it now, but I think she picked up something on the flight back from Houston, as she was running a fever, had a stuffy nose, and her throat was sore. If you use those symptoms to describe just about anyone else, like Aunt Ethel or that neighbor's stupid kid who's always playing in the street, you think "oh, it's just a cold." But when new parents hear them in reference to their first child, the effect is slightly different. Bubonic plague! Polio! Drunken Yellow Whooping Fever with a touch of gout! There's generally much running around in tight circles and bumping into things while we scramble for the phone so that we can call the doctor and get an appointment now no not tomorrow afternoon it has to be now RIGHT FREAKING NOW!
Of course, when you get to the pediatrician's office you don't get any further than the Nurse Practitioner, who smiles and gently tells you that she has a cold and that you should give her lots of juice and let her sleep as much as she wants. Which is pretty much what we do every day. I think she said something about Tylenol, too.
When she's not running a fever hot enough to boil an egg, Sam has been displaying quite a few new talents lately. It's so amazingly cool that she's getting to the point where she reacts to specific things you say. She turns and smiles at me if I say her name, for example, and if you put out your palm and say "Gimme five!" she'll giggle and slap your hand over and over again like it's the greatest thing ever conceived of by God or man. If you lean in and say "Beep!" she'll stretch out her index finger and poke you on the nose. Or sometimes the eye if she's tired and her aim is off. But she was going for the nose! She's also started to learn the joys of waving in response to "Hi!" although at this point it's less waving and more just flailing her arm around like a spaz. With this deep bag of tricks, we plan on forming a troupe and touring the French countryside as soon as we can find a dancing bear. A good one.
Cute as all this is, I'm starting to have this creeping sense of dread in a way. It's caused by the fact that Sam is really curious about everything. The pointing continues, and she's starting to try and put words to some of them. The cat, for example, is often "gat," though sometimes it's also "get" or "da da" or "hominid," the latter of which is totally wrong and I'm very disappointed with her when she makes that mistake. The creeping dread comes from the fact that she's not only interested in pointing and making sounds at things, but she also wants to get to them and grab, poke, taste, scatter, and stab them. She's pulling up all the time now, and I think it's just a matter of time before she makes the breakthrough to full mobility and I come home from work one day to Sam, a big pile of ashes, and a very exasperated Geralyn. Given my mom's stories about my childhood and the revolutionary work that Gregor Mendel did with pea pods, I'd say there's a good chance this will come to pass.
And now, pictures:
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I particularly like this picture. That's one happy mommy and daughter, even if they're both a little sleepy.
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Parenting ,
Samantha
During our trip to Houston for Thanksgiving, Sam was fascinated by the airplanes and trucks on the tarmac. She'd pound on the window and yell at them, then look dismayed when one of the trucks drove into the building directly beneath her.
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Photography
As I've mentioned before, Ger, Sam, and I pass by some great views on our walks around our neighborhood. Part of it is up on a hill overlooking this:
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This is my first panoramic shot, so make sure you scroll to the right to see it all. If you don't have to scroll to see it, I don't want to hear anything from you, Dr. Bigmonitor.
Half the time the hills in that picture are brown or this kind of nondescript greyish green, but in this pic we just happened to walk past it after we had gotten a bunch of rain. When that happens, everything is green and squishy for a week or so.
Thanks to Todd for pointing me to PTgui, a great program for stitching photos together for panoramic views. It was so easy, I'll probably do some more in the near future as well.
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General
This is Maddie, which is short for "Madigan," so named by my sister and brother-in-law because of his long body and short legs. You may also notice that Maddie is a cyborg.
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Photography
As you may have noticed by looking over there to the right, I've added a "Picture of the Day" (POTD) to the site. This is something that's been on my to-do list for quite some time but I finally got around to doing it. It gives me a chance to post pictures of something other than Sam (though she'll definitely be included as well). I also added the ability to comment on each POTD. It was all relatively easy to do with Movable Type, with the majority of the time being spent tweaking the templates to get them the way I want.
My next tweak to the site will probably involve giving the Now Reading, Last Saw, and Now Playing pages similar treatments so that people can comment on them, browse to past entries, etc. Maybe in a week or so.
I'm also contemplating a redesign of the whole site, or at least a new color scheme. I'm getting kind of tired of the current one and want to try something different. I'd also like the excuse to take my CSS programming skizzles to the next level. Any thoughts on this from you readers? Are you particularly enamored with the current design?
In the meantime, enjoy the POTDs, and leave a comment or two! They may not necessarily change every day, but probably a few times a week at least.
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Site Maintenance
Shopping for furniture is tiring. I took this picture while we were all out with my mother shopping for a new couch the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Notice my Mom in the background, kicking back every bit as much as Sam.
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Photography