1398 Entries. Showing page 4 of 94...

12/15/2010

Number One Etiquette Rule for Email

If you get an email message that contains questions, be sure that your reply answers all the questions. You can mentally number the questions as you read the email and then be sure to answer them. Feel free to number your responses.

12/14/2010

'Airplane' by Local Natives

This song blows me away:

11/21/2010

Vivid TSA Dream

I had a vivid dream last night where I worked for a company that had a new invention and I was going to be taking it on an airline trip with me. My boss, in the dream, handed me a set of slides that showed what the device looked like under the airport scanner. He told me to be sure I show up early at the airport to deliver the slides.

My dream self knew that what would happen is that the slides are "certified" in advance, and that they would be loaded into the airport's scanner database so that when this device came up on the scanner, it would be white flagged rather than red flagged. It was a set of slides that would basically contribute to the scanner's pattern recognition database.

Anyway, I don't know if there is anything like this, but I thought my sleeping self had a good idea.

11/11/2010

Fifth Grade Science Project

Here's what we cooked up for a science project. All the language is simplified so that both father and son are on the same page, so please excuse the over-generalizations. This is, I will remind you, for fifth grade. We'll see if the teacher approves it since we didn't choose one from the lame list. This also has a kind of "Mythbusters" thing going where we get to experiment with dental floss, so that's cool.

My previous track record with science projects is terrible - #1 did a project where we encoded MP3s at different quality levels and then did a sound test with his peers to see at which quality level people cease to be able to discern a difference. The teachers didn't understand the project, but that was back when no one had ipods or anything, so maybe it would be more understandable now.

And now, 2010's bright idea:

1. Topic Idea – explore "tensile strength" – the amount of force it takes to break a string.

2. Question to Be Answered – are two strands together twice as strong as one strand? Are three strands three times as strong?

3. Possible Procedure – hang weights from single cotton sewing thread, 2 twisted, 3 twisted, 4 twisted, 5, 6, 7, 8 until each string breaks. Write down weight it took to break each string. Graph number of threads against weight to see if doubling a thread makes it twice as strong or if you get even more strength than that. Fun experiment: see how many strands of dental floss it would take to support the weight of a fifth grader.

4. Research Questions – how does adding more strands to a string result in greater strength? Also, when two things work together are they more than twice as strong? Can we see places in daily life where this principle works? In an emergency, could a bunch of dental floss be as strong as a rope?

11/03/2010

My Brain on Google: Update

As promised, the next time I couldn't think of something, I imagined myself googling it. This time, it was the name of baseball player Will Clark, who played at my alma mater, Mississippi State University. I thought of "Roy Clark" fairly quickly, but knew that wasn't right. I imagined googling it, and it didn't get me any farther. So I did my dad's alphabet trick and by the time I got to the W's, that was kind of what started me thinking in the "Will" direction until I reached some cognitive rest about it. Sure enough, that was the right answer.

So, alphabet method 1, imagining googling something, 0.

10/27/2010

Being a Father

Being a father is very difficult, mostly because of my own shortcomings, and of challenges inherent in typical male patterns of thinking in this culture. Not to over-generalize, but I and a lot of males like to put on our fixer hats and fix a problem. I remember Fred Sanford's getting out his "bud nipper" and that's the way we approach most things. But no problems in the real world really get solved that way. Maybe the occasional, acute emergency. Dads are great in these situations - cleaning up broken glass, killing a spider, mowing the yard. Almost any task that can take a situation from utter chaos to German automotive precision in less than three hours is the ideal battleground for a male. But most problems in the real world are more like doing the dishes. The dishes never get done, but they can never be left undone. A kid doesn't learn to read over night. A child doesn't learn manners in one etiquette seminar and then execute those manners flawlessly. And yet there is some part of me that expects such absurdities to be possible.

I've been thinking about this tonight because my autistic son has been very grumpy with us lately. He really does not want to talk and feels very invaded when we ask questions and expect him to reciprocate with answers. And so after a day in which nearly every one of his responses to me was grumpy, I really "let him have it" verbally, and told him that he was going to have to be polite and stop being so grumpy. Right, Barlow, I'm sure you really flipped the switch. Thing is, he didn't get grumpy over night, and he's not going to become Mr. Conversation overnight either.

Being a Dad is a constant process of thinking "I'm a terrible Dad" and then thinking "If I were a good Dad, I would do X every night" and then going and doing X immediately because you know in your heart that it's better than doing nothing even if you can't keep it up for long. Obviously, some of you, dear readers, are exemplary fathers who are consistent, divide your free time by the number of children you have and give them each an equal amount of time every day. But I suspect I'm not the only one who worries about being a bad father.

I heard a lecture from Brian Fikkert this past weekend about the right way to alleviate poverty and all I could think about the whole time was that his principles are the same ones involved in parenting (even though, oddly, paternalism was one of the things he was urging the church to avoid) and how I fall short. Instead of spending three hours learning how to properly minister to the poor and needy, I sat there thinking about being a father. If you want to boil down the whole "When Helping Hurts" theory into a simple picture, imagine teaching a child to tie his or her shoes. "Fixing the problem" (an untied shoe) never solves the larger problem. The one who can sit there through the excruciating seconds involved in tying missteps, patiently letting the kid tie and retie the shoelace, will eventually never have to tie a shoe again. The impatient one who simply ties the shoe and gets on with it will end up with the role of shoe-tier for the rest of time. Solving problems is easy. Empowering others to be problem solvers is very hard.

Alright, well, better go to bed. Sleep is one of those things that you can't "solve" all at once. You can't store it, and you can't catch up when it is missed. Even God rested between days, satisfied with a world that had light but no land for a few hours, grass but no cultivated plants for a while, and it was still very good, albeit in-process.

10/22/2010

My Brain on Google

Last night, for the life of me, I couldn't remember the name of this beer that everyone in Philly was drinking and that I see in 'state stores' in Alabama all the time. They even have a dark version that is so great and so cheap. It is called "Yuengling." But I wanted to think of the name the old fashioned way. So I tried to remember the sign, the look of the bottle, the social situations in Philly back when I tried it for the first time. Then, I gave up and typed "philadelphia beer" into Google and one of the first hits had the word "Yards" in it and I immediately thought of "yuengling".

So I'm wondering whether imagining myself googling a search phrase is going to be a new tool in my "trying to remember" toolkit? What a strange, circuitous method of thinking of the name. Of course, seeing the "Y" and thinking Yuengling is a variation on my Dad's preferred method which is to think through the alphabet - he starts with A and keeps going until he's exhausted the alphabet. So the google method ended up working in a similar way. But next time I can't remember something, I'm going to imagine googling it, imagine what the other results might be, and then see if that helps me narrow it down.

10/20/2010

My Doings: Dentist Visit

Went to Forest Park dental today - the "Forest Park" part is short for St. Louis Community College at Forest Park. A place where you can get student hygienists to work on your teeth for next to nothing. It is a great boon to a family of six like ours. I felt like a lapsed Catholic today, it has been 10 years since my last confession, er, dental visit. Yes, I know - shameful. But they said my teeth looked pretty good to them and that my "home care" has been very successful.

Interestingly, they guessed that I have tetracycline stains from childhood antibiotics, which is accurate - their alternate guess was fluoridosis, but here's a little fact about Picayune, Mississippi - the town of my birth and early life - it did NOT have fluoridated water. One of the town fathers must have been a John Bircher, bless his heart, and he kept fluoride out of the water. That's probably why there are more creative, interesting people from Picayune, MS than from Lake Woebegone. Picayune finally got fluoridated water in 2004 (big mistake). So don't look for the next Stephen Poff to come from Picayune.

My parents got to see my new niece yesterday, and I'm really jealous. I will have to wait until Christmas to see her. It would be nice to live closer to family.

I saw a big motorcade today of police officers - a policeman was killed in the line of duty and the funeral was today. There were so many uniforms in the funeral procession; I counted at least 35 motorcycle cops, and at least a hundred other vehicles of various types, all with their lights blaring.

I asked James the other day how "special ed" was (not thinking how they probably don't call it that) and he asked "is special Ed a nickname for someone?"

Ann's iron died today. If you have suggestions for a good replacement, let us know.

Ok, how's that for a mundane post? It's too dangerous to talk about anything interesting these days.

09/30/2010

Wacky Kids

So, #1 now has a blog that is called "Wacktopia". Perfect. The header image is his latest art project, a self portrait. He's taking art this year in eighth grade, and obviously having a hard time of it. The tests even have math on them that he can't do yet. So the teacher asked them "If I have a poster that is 3 feet by 5 feet and I want to halve it, how big will it be" and he answers "It will be half as big." Right on, brother.

#4 loves coins. He has tons of them, collects them, etc. On our trip to Washington D.C., souvenir coins were pretty much all he wanted at the museum gift shops. Well, tonight at the Dollar Store, he had exact change, but wanted to get coins in change so he used bigger denomination paper money and he ended up getting a few quarters. In the dark car on the way home, he tells Ann that he got an "eagle quarter" (i.e., regular quarter, not a state commemorative quarter) but that he was going to put it in his special wallet anyway because it was "different." Well, if he wasn't right, that stinker. He showed me the quarter when he got home and I immediately saw that it was a real silver quarter from 1935. Probably has a melt value of three to five bucks. Hilarious. He knew it was special without really knowing why. I haven't received a silver quarter or dime in change in a long time.

#4 got into an argument with #3 on the way home the other day and got so angry that he tore an art project in half. It was a picture of a koala bear with the caption "I will make good choices" written below it. How appropriate.

#3 had a lot of penetrating questions about tsunamis tonight. He's been trying to tell a lot of jokes lately - making them up. Lots of plays on words like Chile / Chilly. He's getting better at it every day. His brothers are not very charitable in their laughing.

#2 always brings home interesting questions from school about the bible or about ancient history. They've been reading the Myth of Gilgamesh this semester and now they're on to Herodotus. He was telling me about this funny passage where Herodotus talks about a lewd Egyptian puppet. He and I are always kidding around about chupacabras because he likes to listen to George Noory / Coast to Coast a.m. as he's drifting off to sleep. We're both bummed about the Cardinals slump.

On the way to church last Sunday, out of the blue, #4 sighed loudly and said "I just love George Washington."

Every time I shave, #4 likes to stand by the sink and tell me that removing my "spikes" will really impair my ability to fight off other males who might want to "get Mom." I think this is the fruit of one too many dinosaur documentaries. When he's not talking about that, he goes through the entire script of a razor commercial - "Dad, are you tired of stretching and pulling? The burning?"

I have to write these things down so I don't forget...

09/17/2010

Swell Season Covers 'Two-Headed Boy'

This is just too much. Wow.

08/24/2010

Mr. Rogers

From Wikipedia:

"During the 1997 Daytime Emmys, the Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Rogers. The following is an excerpt from Esquire's coverage of the gala, written by Tom Junod:"

Mister Rogers went onstage to accept the award — and there, in front of all the soap opera stars and talk show sinceratrons, in front of all the jutting man-tanned jaws and jutting saltwater bosoms, he made his small bow and said into the microphone, "All of us have special ones who have loved us into being. Would you just take, along with me, ten seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are. Ten seconds of silence."

And then he lifted his wrist, looked at the audience, looked at his watch, and said, 'I'll watch the time." There was, at first, a small whoop from the crowd, a giddy, strangled hiccup of laughter, as people realized that he wasn't kidding, that Mister Rogers was not some convenient eunuch, but rather a man, an authority figure who actually expected them to do what he asked. And so they did. One second, two seconds, seven seconds — and now the jaws clenched, and the bosoms heaved, and the mascara ran, and the tears fell upon the beglittered gathering like rain leaking down a crystal chandelier. And Mister Rogers finally looked up from his watch and said softly "May God be with you," to all his vanquished children.

Things I need to Get Around to Writing / Finishing

I'm posting this here to remind myself and to commit myself to finishing some of these things:

1. Small workbook on problem of nominalism for youth.

2. Informal essay about seminary students and how professors and churchmen should strive to isolate them from direct engagement with denominational controversies.

3. Expand my several-years-old regional AAR presentation about Kinism into an extended critique of the position.

4. I'm interested in the way Richard Baxter often erects typologies of various theological views; the way he sketches the spectrum of views and categorizes various thinkers as holding those views tells us a lot about his contemporaries, but probably more about Baxter himself and the way those issues were discussed in the English church.

5. I have done a fair bit of research on the practice of intinction in communion; want to explore this further. At this point, I lean heavily toward recommending against the practice, but I need to think through it more thoroughly. Could be an article.

6. Ran across interesting remark in one of King James I's publications about tobacco. He talks about human breath and it made me wonder about the social history of "bad breath." Might be an article in there somewhere.

7. But most importantly, I've gotta finish revising my dissertation for publication!

08/15/2010

School's Back

Can't believe the kids are starting school this week. It seems like it starts earlier and earlier each year. Who is responsible for pushing this forward? Have you ever heard a single person say "I wish school started earlier in August"? If not, then whose will is being done here?

08/13/2010

Dinosaur Jr.

So I asked my 5th grader if he believed the new scientific theory that fossils formerly classified as triceratops are really immature torosaurus fossils. He said "NO." And here's his reasoning: "my dinosaur books say Torosaurus was 24 feet long and that Triceratops was 28 feet long. And dinosaurs do not get smaller as they develop." Hey, he is working likely with incomplete data, but he handles it rationally. I'm amazed he has been thinking through it so clearly.

08/11/2010

Angel Band



I like this version, man, they can really sing. The guy reminds me of Tom Fogerty a little bit.