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4-Cup Sammy August 30, 2005
"Step right up! You look like a smart cookie! Guess which cup the grape is under and win a prize!"
(I think I have it figured out. It's in her mouth.)
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Contrary to popular wisdom, Ger and I do sometimes get out of the house and go to parties. It's just that these days we tend to take Sam with us. Such was the case last weekend when a friend of Geralyn's had a massive house warming party. There were a lot of kids there, actually, and it was kind of interesting to see what we're in for by watching some of the older ones.
Case in point: One room in the house was designated the playroom, probably because it was chock full of a variety of toys. It was to this room that many of the kids gravitated and this included Samantha. I was sitting on the floor watching her play while another father sat with his son. The father and son painstakingly assembled this Mega Blocks pirate ship, complete with masts, rigging, sails, and the works. They were having fun, minding their own business when another boy ran over, a plastic dinosaur in his pudgy fist.
This newcomer got right in the first kid's face and screamed "SEA MONSTER! SEA MONSTER!" He then proceeded to wail on the Mega Blocks pirate ship with the dinosaur, screaming the whole time. The father tried to interject with a "Oh, we're ah... kind of playing here..." but at every turn the kid would just scream "SEA MONSTER!" and redouble the intensity of his assault on the pirate ship until it was reduced to its component parts and scattered across the carpet like so much flotsam. His work done, the dinosaur-wielding madman screamed once more and ran off.
So much to look forward to.
Sam's social calendar has actually been pretty full lately, as Ger has gotten into the grove of "playdates" with other moms in our area. This week she had a friend over with her daughter Rachel, who actually had more fun than you'd think looking at this picture. I know that Sam still doesn't understand that other people are anything other than objects to be bent to her will and amusement, but she is learning to play with those objects to some extent. For example, she'll pass a ball to a playmate, but beyond that she doesn't seem to care much. But at least there have been no sea monster attacks.
Pictures!
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The last thing to report this week is that we can see how Sam is getting more and more vocal and flexing her linguistic prowess. She'll now try to imitate words and sounds, though she's still usually way off. Still, I just know that one morning I'll go in to get her out of bed and she'll pop off with "Good morning, Father. I thought I might fancy a dairy libation before ensconcing myself before the television to check in on my comrades on Sesame Street. What do you say?" And I'll probably just go back to bed.
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I swear, she put these shades on and then actually mugged for the camera.
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Sam tearing apart the local Toys R Us, one piece of merchandise at a time.
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It's a great book, the kind that makes you want to recommend it to someoene else so you can talk to them about it.
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Ohio's News Channel 5:
Man, if the school's biology teachers don't know what causes pregnancy, the state needs stricter certification processes.There are 490 female students at Timken High School, and 65 are pregnant, according to a recent report in the Canton Repository.
The article reported that some would say that movies, TV, videogames, lazy parents and lax discipline may all be to blame.
School officials are not sure what has contributed to so many pregnancies
Relatedly, I remember a time when an obsession with video games meant that that you'd never really have to worry about pregnancy. How things have changed.
(Link and comments brought to you by the folks at the QuarterToThree.com forums.)
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Amazon.com has started offering a service called Amazon Shorts where you can download short stories for just $0.49 each. It's a pretty cool idea made better (for consumers, anyway) by the fact that it comes with absolutely no digital rights management whatsoever. You can read an HTML version of your purchase or you can have it e-mailed to you in .pdf format. You own it forever, you can copy it to whatever you want, and you can even download it from your "virtual locker" as many times as you want if you delete it or want to access it from another computer. And 49 cents is pretty darn cheap --cheap enough to impulse buy and not get annoyed if you don't end up liking some new author you took a cheap chance on.
So while it seems like this would be a dandy service for consumers if Amazon can manage to actually get some good content (an often overlooked detail in the dot com age), it may or may not be a good deal for authors. One writer posted his thoughts and they're pretty insightful. One ginormous red flag is that authors don't get paid up front, which is something that most non-desperate writers avoid at all (pardon the pun) costs. A writer's job is to write and a publisher's job is to buy the work and publish it. Instead of following this time-honored model, Amazon.com gives authors a cut of each and every sale. So no sale, no payment. Lots of sales, lots of little payments.
To me, this makes sense if you're either a) a struggling writer who can't get a piece bought by a magazine or anthology, or b) a big name who thinks he/she can make more by perpetually getting little pieces of many sales than he/she can by outright selling a work once to a publisher. It's the writers in the middle (a.k.a., "the vast majority of folks") that I don't know about.
Another thing that's not clear is how Amazon accepts writers into the program. It's not a free-for-all system where any armature can put his story up for Amazon to host and sell. But they're not saying right now how you get your work stocked on their site. One has to wonder how they'll deal with this. Open the floodgates and choke the system with poor quality dreck and customers will learn to avoid it. Tighten controls so that only top-tier authors are allowed, and they may have difficulty finding enough takers to provide any kind of selection. Still, I'm glad they're trying new things, and I'd like to see it work.
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Sam can FINALLY enjoy the playground enough to place herself in peril.
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Sam has learned the joys of bellowing. Not screaming, shrieking, or shouting, but bellowing. Early one morning Ger and I were dozing in bed when we were suddenly awakened by a very distinct and surprisingly booming "MAMMA!" from Sam's crib. And it wasn't a one-shot kind of thing, as she repeated it (along with "DADDA!") throughout the day. That night I taught Sam how to play tag by chasing her until I had her cornered, then turning around and running from her until she cornered me. She bellowed the whole time, in both directions. After she wore me out and I lay down on the carpet to catch my breath, she kept running all over the house, bellowing all the way.
What's with all the bellowing I'll never know. I just suppose that it, like all the other inexplicable things she does are enjoyed out of sheer novelty. Come to think of it, such a life inhabiting the extreme polar opposite of jadedness must be pretty dang cool. You and I are world-weary, civilized, and composed. Sam is standing in buckets, yelling at nothing in particular, and having the time of her (so far) short life. Excuse me while I join her for a while.
Okay, I'm back. Pictures!
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Seems like we're taking fewer and fewer pictures of Sam lately, and I'm not sure why. She's more active than ever, constantly doing things that I'd love to catch on film. But I think the problem is that she does them so spontaneously and so quickly before moving on to something else that it's hard to catch them at the right second. For example, one instant she's playing with a pink pig puppet on her arm, but by the time I whip out the camera, turn it on, and focus, all I get is this.
Still, as Sam's activity level has increased, so has the need to keep an eye on her and curb certain behaviors like stabbing the cat. I often worry about how well I'll do when the parental guidance I'll have to dole out is more of the gray variety, like scooping out all the chocolate from the Neapolitan ice cream while leaving the black and white stuff behind. It probably doesn't help that I'm currently reading To Kill a Mockingbird and gradually realizing that I'll never ever be as absurdly good a parent as Atticus Finch is. I guess I can comfort myself with the knowledge that those were different times and that Gregory Peck probably never tried to talk a drunk, pregnant, teenage girl out of robbing a convenience store. You know, because it was novel.
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This kid is starting to do things I just don't understand.
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Crackers!
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Man, I thought I was a fan of Chipotle, the quasi-fast-food restaurant that specializes in fantabulous burritos the size of your head. I eat there at least once a week (and on occasion, more often), I'm in bliss every time I scarf down one of their massive offerings, and I've proselytized several co-workers so that it's our most popular lunchtime destination. Like I said, I considered myself a pretty big fan.
That was before I found this: www.chipotlelovers.com. The lengths to which these guys have taken their love of Chipotle borders on psychotic, and I'd even say they're on the far side of the border. Their mania over this dining establishment is outweiged, however, by the equally absurd quality of the website. I've spent more than a little time working with hardcore fans seeking an outlet for their passion, but this is beyond the pale.
They have everything related to Chipotle on there --store locators, nutritional information, menus, news, in-depth information about every menu item's ingredients, photographs, polls, and more. Heck, I don't even know how I ever called myself a fan without even knowing about the entire Chipotle slang lexicon. The nutritonal information guide is particularly fantastic, as it allows you to assemble a custom-ordered burrito, bowl, or taco and view detailed nutritonal information based on your unique build.
In fact the look and functionality of the website is also awesome from a design perspective, which kind of leads me to believe that this whole thing is either (a) intended primarily as an engaging portfolio for the web designer's services, (b) a not-so-subtle example of viral marketing secretly banked by the Chipotle corporation, or (c) all of the above. My money is on (c). Also, it is on a chicken burrito with rice, black beans, mild salsa, cheese, and sour cream.
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I definitely enjoyed the book of short stories the most, and I suspect that Dick excells in this area over novels. They were mostly like neat thought experiments, like the future-telling paradoxes from "The Minority Report" and "Paycheck," or the examination of paranoia in "Second Variety." The novels were just kind of meandering and felt like he was filling a quota. Do Androids Dream (upon which the movie Blade Runner was based) was pretty good, but felt disjointed and like it needed to be fleshed out more. Galactic Pot Healer, on the other hand, ranks up (or down) there as one of the worst books I've ever read. It seems more like the literary equivalent of a doodle that was passed off for a complete work --there ar a few interesting ideas but it's all mixed up, formless, and half-baked.
I think I'm done with Philliip K. Dick for now. I may pick up what are supposed to be his other classics (like Radio Free Albemuth or A Scanner Darkly) later, but I need a break. Simpsons Season Six's Shortcoming August 16, 2005
So as an obedient fan should, I picked up the new The Simpsons Season 6 DVD set today. I love the show and based on the first disk that I watched tonight the DVD content is still top notch. They once again have commentaries for every episode, along with tons of extras. They've also retained the lesson learned from the Season 5 set where the DVD menus are both entertaining (funny stuff happens if you let it sit idle for a few seconds) but unlike previous seasons you can execute a command immediately without waiting.
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At least Fox was kind enough to set up a website where you can send in three bucks and receive an "alternate" case for the set. I'm already in the process of doing that, even though nowhere do they show you what the new case will look like. Still, it can't be worse.
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Sam has gotten quite adept at scooping food out of a bowl and feeding herself with a spoon. We can almost leave her alone at meal time if we put the tarp down underneath her.
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While coming back from the zoo on Saturday, we passed a little girl sporting a tee shirt that read, "I'M THE BOSS!" Parenthood has given me many wonderful gifts, one of which is the urge to throttle any parent who buys their children shirts like that. You don't need to encourage toddlers to think that they're in control. In fact, from what I hear, most of your energy goes into trying to counteract such sentiments. Sure, they can't read, but they know. For my part, I plan on getting a shirt that just says "Do you want a time out?" Such an item would save my vocal cords from otherwise certain exhaustion.
Actually, I'm selling Sam short a little there. She's not throwing tantrums yet, but you can see the little gears going in her head sometimes as she starts to piece together the association between crying and screaming and getting what she wants. Her teething is putting her in a grumpy mood as it is, but I think some of it is deliberate. Yesterday she wanted nothing more in the world than to lay hands on Ger's scrapbooking supplies, which included scissors, paper cutter, glitter, and other items that could either create precious memories or a trip to the emergency room. When I refused to hand over any of this contraband, the wailing started and continued until I was forced to call in reinforcements from Sesame Street.
Later that day she made up for it, though, by giving me one of the best laughs I've had in a long time. We were up in her bedroom playing when Sam started showing an interest in pulling out and trying on some of her different shirts. So I helped her take her shirt off and put a different one on (an orange and black Halloween one for some reason), then change back into her original one. A few minutes later I was in the other room and I heard grunts of frustration coming from Sam's nursery. I went in there and doubled over laughing when I saw how she had tried to pull her own shirt off, only to get it pulled halfway down her face with her arms stuck in the sleeves and pointing out at odd angles. Then because I was laughing so hard she started laughing, and the site of her standing there laughing while bamboozled by her own clothing made me laugh even harder. I'm just mad that the camera's batteries were dead.
Speaking of which,
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I love this picture in particular. It was taken near the Zoo where we stopped off to let Sam ride on the Merry-Go-Round. She was understandably freaked out at first, but warmed up when she realized that none of the giant frogs or screaming horses were going to eat her. We also took her on a little ride where she sat on an orange butterfly and went around in circles, but for SOME reason my camera decided that those pictures were an affront to nature and had to be destroyed. I'm still really mad about that.
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On a whim and on the way to the San Diego Zoo, we stopped at a Merry Go Round and took Sam for a ride. Note: It is REALLY HARD to take pictures with the "full auto" settings on a digital camera when your subjects are whizzing and bobbing by you at 15 m.p.h. We took like a gillion pictures, and this is probably the best one.
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Free child in specially marked packages! (Diapers not included.)
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What a difference a 54 weeks makes. Man, I wonder what she'll look like this time next year?
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Actually, a few of the chapters were good and a few might be great to come back to if I needed to research a particular sub-topic (e.g., measuring personality through item response theory), but on balance I don't feel like I got much out of it. I'm just going to have to be more careful and pick books that read more like textbooks or self-contained technical books instead of an outlet for researchers to increase their publication count.
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Sam's dangerous fascination with stairs has begun. This playground equipment should have safety gates.
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The Man in the High Castle is an alternate reality story set 20 years after Japan and Germany win World War II and co-occupy America. This is not a plot-driven book, so most of it is rather uneventful. But what I found interesting is Dick's portrayal of various people and their stuggle to be who they are. One character that we're sympathetic to early on (he's a white businessman trying to fit in under Japanese occupation) turns out to be a real dirtbag any way you slice it. Other characters are initially set up as antagonists, but revealed to be very complex and sympathetic. Dick's skill with characterization is pretty evident.
And then there's a bunch of metaphysical stuff about alternate realities, truth, and humankind's struggle to perceive. Kind of interesting and thought-provoking, but too vague for my tastes. Apparently this kind of thing is Dick's forte, though, so while I'll probably read at least one more of his books (I have "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" in the queue), it may wear thin.
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Still not quite sure of herself on the playground equipment.
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Gah. We're sick again. I used to sometimes go years between getting sick, but Sam seems intent on breaking any wellness streaks I may get going by giving me whatever malady she's having. I'm pretty sure that she picks stuff up from the child care area at the YMCA where she is periodically deposited so Geralyn can run in place for an hour. I'm guessing that all those kids just sit around playing with each other's snot until everybody gets sick. At least it seems to be limited to congestion and runny noses. Speaking of which, Sam should forget about tying her shoes or reading. She seriously needs to learn the important life skill of blowing one's nose. We have to suction that thing out with a rubber ball syringe like every 5 minutes.
Beyond little spats of illness, though, everything else is going fine. Sam is learning the fine art of holding my hand and walking alongside me, a feat that would be called "heeling" if her genes were scrambled in a slightly more canine fashion. This actually makes me very nervous, as I'm constantly worried that she'll break free and dart out in front of an oncoming gay pride parade or something. So I teach her by holding on to her little hand just about as tightly as I can, and I have no doubt that years from now she'll stunt some boy's puppy love by accepting his invitation to hold hands and crushing his finger bones to chunky paste.
Look, screenshots:
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I mentioned this in one of the Photo of the Day entries, but I'm constantly surprised by how expressive Sam has become. It doesn't seem like that long ago that her expressions were limited to "Crying" and "Not Crying." Now she's got a whole range that would put most college drama majors to shame: delight, irritation, confusion, exasperation, anticipation, boredom, and mild irritation. She also makes a very unique grimace when she's doing you-know-what, often done shortly after meals and accompanied with a squatting stance you normally only see inside a sumo wrestling ring.
This, of course, brings to mind the topic of potty training, which we know is lurking right around the bend. It's not something we've thought about beyond laughing at the titles of related children's books --"Elmo Poops," "Everybody Poops," and the less popular "Nobody Poops But You" to name a few. I honestly don't know how the heck we're going to deal with that. I can't even get Sam to stop ripping the safety gate out of the drywall, much less do her business over a little bowl inappropriately festooned with Sesamee Street characters. I mean, how do you teach a child to deficate on Cookie Monster?
Yeah, that's right, I made a poop joke. You'd better get used to it, because it's going to be coming up a lot in the near future. And no refunds on Sam Fan Club membership dues!
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Ella! Ella!
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Trying on new shoes. Sam actually outgrew them before we made it back to the car.
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Pst, hey. If you've been hearing a lot about these new-fangled video games but aren't familiar enough with them to make a judgement about their value, go read this article in The Economist right now. It's well researched, level-headed, fair, sensible, and generally brilliant.
There are many little gems in there, but here's one of my favorites:
Pair that one with this one and you've got pretty much what I think about the whole "are games bad for you?" question:Even games with no educational intent require players to learn a great deal. Games are complex, adaptive and force players to make a huge number of decisions. Gamers must construct hypotheses about the in-game world, learn its rules through trial and error, solve problems and puzzles, develop strategies and get help from other players via the internet when they get stuck. The problem-solving mechanic that underlies most games is like the 90% of an iceberg below the waterline—invisible to non-gamers. But look beneath the violent veneer of “Grand Theft Auto”, and it is really no different from a swords-and-sorcery game. Instead of stealing a crystal and delivering it to a wizard so that he can cure the princess, say, you may have to intercept a consignment of drugs and deliver it to a gang boss so he can ransom a hostage. It is the pleasure of this problem-solving, not the superficial violence which sometimes accompanies it, that can make gaming such a satisfying experience.
The article also contains some interesting tidbits about the use of video games in educational and business settings. One teacher played through a video game while projecting it before a class of students, then improved their English skills by having them write descriptions of what he was doing. There are also companies that apparently use video games for training employees, saying that "Gamers are skilled at multi-tasking, good at making decisions and evaluating risks, flexible in the face of change and inclined to treat setbacks as chances to try again. Firms that understand and exploit this can gain a competitive advantage."So games are inherently good, not bad? Actually they are neither, like books, films, the internet, or any other medium. All can be used to depict sex and violence, or to educate and inform. Indeed, the inclusion of violent and sexual content in games is arguably a sign of the maturity of the medium, as games become more like films.
Of course, the obvious, gaping flaw in that argument is that people who already possess those skills might be attracted to gaming while those without them take up other hobbies. Like beating up kids who are gamers. But still, many biodata tests used to select prospective employees ask applicants to agree/disagree with items like "I was active in organizations while in school" or "I participated in organized sports." Why not ask "I rescued the elf princess, hurrr..." ?
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While shopping last weekend we turned Sam loose in a Kay-Bee Toys store (fun fact: I worked at such a place in high school). Man, Elmo is EVERYWHERE.
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It's the kind of stuff that you'd be expected to learn in an introductory course if majoring in any of these topics in college, but Bryson makes it so easy to read, so breezy that I just soaked it up and didn't want to put the book down. He has a marvelous style that makes all these topics approachable and lets you take something away from each of them without resorting to nasty formulas or tedious memorization. One of the other things I particularly like is that this book is equal parts history of science and history of scientists. Bryson injects every chapter with lively descriptions of the men and women behind the science, giving us amusing exposures to their foibles, eccentricities, and character. I highly recommend this book to anyone with even a passing interest in ...well, ANYTHING. I'd also love to see a sequel or similar treatment for the social sciences like psychology, sociology, anthropology, etc.
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One of the things I'm continuously surprised at is how expressive Sam has gotten in her facial and other nonverbal expressions. It's not uncommon to see glee, frustration, confusion, and (as shown here) annoyance.
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Hey, we all look like this just after waking up. Just most of us don't have a jerk of a daddy who takes pictures of us.
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