They are Good Boys

I have 3 boys ranging in age from 4 to 9. They are good boys. They do, however have a lot of energy and love to drive me crazy. I will say that some of the things that they do are unacceptable.

For example: They refuse to honor the family rule of 'no food downstairs'. I commonly find evidence of food usage downstairs. I'll find things like sucker sticks or gummys stuck in the carpet! I will also find candy wrappers or popcorn on the floor. This sort of lawless behavior makes me worry about the future of our nation.

I will also find video game controllers and games strewn in a haphazard manner all over the floor near the TV. Would it be so hard to just put it away neatly? Outrageous! In a similar manner socks are left all over the house and yard, and I will often find squirt guns (in the summer) outside on the lawn. Also, the downstairs couch cushions are rarely on the couch! I'll find them either spread throughout the basement, or sometimes arranged to make little forts. Come on! Put the cushions back when you're done!

They are also causing damage to my home. I will occasionally find small indentations in the wall near the area where the play blocks are stored. This is really just gateway behavior to full-on vandalism. What's next? Gang tags on their bedroom walls?

What may be the most antisocial behavior of all: Slamming the dang door! None of the houses around us have fences installed, so it turns our backyards into a large park. Unfortunately, my sons cannot stay in the 'park' or in the house. They are constantly migrating back and forth. Can they just close the dang door? No. They cannot. They either leave it swinging open, or slam it will all of the force in their small bodies. It feels like the house was hit by a wrecking ball. I know that it's going to do some sort of damage.

These are examples of the horrible behavior exhibited by my boys.

Now, let me give you some examples of the things that I did as a boy. (warning: my memories are suspect and should not be taken as actual occurances unless verified by my mother.)

As a small boy, I remember one bright day, thinking how hard it would be to walk the 10 feet down the hall to the bathroom. So I took a leak in the corner of my bedroom. It was stinky for a long time. I also remember sticking a half eaten sandwich behind the TV. The garbage can, just like the bathroom, is very difficult to reach. I found it months(years?) later dried into a fossil.

I put a metal jar lid upside down on the coffee table and lit something on fire in it. I let it burn for a while. It wasn't until I picked up the lid with pliers that I noticed that I'd burned a black circle into the top of the table.

Continuing the property damage theme, one day I was making a boomerang out of plywood. I set the uncut plywood on the picnic table in the backyard for support while cutting it. That plywood was very difficult to cut, but I really wanted a boomerang. After I finished my first cut, the raw plywood fell to the ground along with the corner of the table. I cut the corner off the picnic table! I finished making the boomerang, but I could never get it to come back when I threw it.

I did a bunch of other delinquent things that I won't list here. I'll mention just one more item- the worst thing that I remember doing. I found a large pile of leaves in the garage. Instead of sweeping them out into the driveway, I had another idea. I lit the pile on fire. (Yes, you may have noticed my youthful fascination with fire.) The pile of leaves was dry, so it quickly grew into what seemed to me to be an inferno. Don't forget that this was IN the garage. I was so frightened that the fire would spread to the house! I was able to put the fire out somehow but I wasn't able to hide the thick smoke that filled the house. Man, that was a bad one!

I am so glad that my boys are not like I was. I'm going to try to not get after them so much. I have a friend at the gym who just sent his last child out of the house. He is facing the empty nest and not liking what he sees. He told me last week that he really wishes that he wouldn't have yelled at his kids so much and been so hard on them. I get mad at my kids for such little things and it needs to stop.

I'm not sure why my Dad let me live to reach adulthood. I don't even really remember my parents getting mad at me for the crazy stuff I did. One consolation for my parents: my friends were much worse.

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The French Intifada

You probably remember the 'riots' from last summer in France. The BBC gives a timeline of the riots and is the source of the image to the right. There were thousands of cars burned and lots of rocks thrown. But they were no big deal, right? Burning cars is just a rite of passage for youth. Who hasn't thrown a Molotov cocktail or two at parked cars in their neighborhood. These 'riots' were just a sowing of the oats, as it were, for these french youths. These youths are obviously just dissatisfied with the unemployment rates. Just a rebellion of the underclass. According to the media, the spark that set off the inferno was the accidental electrocution of 2 'youths' that were running from police.

Let's get back to reality. The amount of violence was amazing. The number of cars burned per day for the first 11 days of the riots last fall are discussed here, including this chart.


That is a lot of cars! The violence lasted about a month in October and November of 2005. You haven't heard much about any violence since then, so it's easy to assume that things have died down. They haven't.

An average of 112 cars per day have been burned this year in France. Burning cars has become passe, so they have moved on to burning buses (and people). And this from Forbes: The police are being ambushed.

On a routine call, three unwitting police officers fell into a trap. A car darted out to block their path, and dozens of hooded youths surged out of the darkness to attack them with stones, bats and tear gas before fleeing. One officer was hospitalized, and no arrests made.

The recent ambush was emblematic of what some officers say has become a near-perpetual and increasingly violent conflict between police and gangs in tough, largely immigrant French neighborhoods that were the scene of a three-week paroxysm of rioting last year.

One small police union claims officers are facing a "permanent intifada." Police injuries have risen in the year since the wave of violence.

National police reported 2,458 cases of violence against officers in the first six months of the year, on pace to top the 4,246 cases recorded for all of 2005 and the 3,842 in 2004. Firefighters and rescue workers have also been targeted - and some now receive police escorts in such areas.

On Sunday, a band of about 30 youths, some wearing masks, forced passengers out of a bus in a southern Paris suburb in broad daylight Sunday, set it on fire, then stoned firefighters who came to the rescue, police said. No one was injured. Two people were arrested, one of them a 13-year-old, according to LCI television.

It doesn't seem that the violence has ended.

Let's talk about what is really going on in France. It is serious and it has implications for the rest of Europe (which has similar policies and problems). These are also important lessons for the US to learn from France. (I finally found something where I agree that we can learn from France. This, and nuclear power policy, but that's another post.)

I will be referring often to this article by Michel Gurfinkel in the Weekly Standard. Any unreferenced quotations are from his article.

The problem boils down to this. The French government has allowed the formation of large, autonomous muslim-controlled zones throughout France. There are a large number of these no-go zones, helpfully listed here by the French government. As an example, here is a map of one of the no-go zones where the government and police have abdicated control. This map is of a suburb of Calais, one of two suburbs of Calais on the list.


How could this have happened? First, large groups of muslim immigrants moved into the suburbs.

Ethnic criminal gangs took over, as often happens under such circumstances: They forced the last native French or European inhabitants out, and made it increasingly difficult for the police to enter and monitor the projects. Later, fundamentalist Islamic brotherhoods asserted themselves in the projects, or cités, as they are called.

The government was unwilling to 'oppress' the immigrants by reasserting control over their country. The apparent approach was to ignore the immigrants and hope that nothing bad would happen. In fact, the police were told to stay out of the muslim enclaves.

One police source confided to Le Monde that security forces were actually "discouraged" from making incursions into those neighborhoods, except on rare occasions. The source went on: "It is a terrible mistake. Since we avoid going inside, where they are, they attack us outside, where we are."

The fact that immigrants tend to settle together in small communities is not unusual. We still have 'chinatowns' and 'little italies' in many cities in the US. The difference here is a dangerous dynamic that has developed between criminal gangs and radical muslims. These two groups have formed a codependent partnership. The criminals have agreed to limit the crime within the muslim areas, and the extremists have agreed to offer a safe haven for the criminals.

A complex relationship seems to have arisen between these two power centers. On the one hand, the fundamentalists intended to protect the immigrant community against everything the gangs stood for: drugs, alcohol, sexual promiscuity, easy money from crime. On the other hand, they derived benefits from the ethnic enclave status the gangs had secured. A tacit or not so tacit agreement was reached: The brotherhood would ignore, and at times condone as "holy war," the activities of the gangs outside the neighborhood; the gangs would help the brotherhoods to impose Islamic law on the inside.

There was a further division of labor: When the gangs would engage in inordinate violence against the police or non-Muslim communities, the brotherhoods would act as "wise men" available to mediate between the government and the gangs and to help restore law and order--on their own terms.

This partnership does not look kindly on any attempt by the French government to reestablish any control over 'little Algeria'.

According to many experts, this is precisely what happened last year, when the conservative minister of the interior, Nicolas Sarkozy, talked of "thoroughly cleansing" ("passer au Kärcher") the eight hundred or so no-go zones that had cropped up all over urban France. Neither the gangs nor the fundamentalists liked that prospect. The gangs masterminded unprecedented "youth riots"; the fundamentalists then restored civil peace, and won as a reward de facto pardon for most rioters, a "less provocative" police presence in the suburbs, i.e., no "cleansing," more privileges for Islam as "France's second and most quickly growing religion," and recognition for themselves as national leaders. As Michel Thooris put it in an interview with L'Est Républicain>, an influential newspaper in eastern France: "Security is a state prerogative. Inasmuch as the national police fail to provide it, the imams are ready to usurp it." The riots last year clearly ended as a victory for both the gangs and the fundamentalist imams.

The French are not blind to what is happening and many are alarmed. The upcoming presidential election may offer a change from the current policies. Nicalos Sarkozy(mentioned above) is the conservative candidate and Segolene Royal as the Socialist's choice. Both these candidates are running on a law-and-order platform. Hopefully the winner will be able to face up to the problems and find some solutions.

Europe, for all of it's current feel-good socialism, has a long history of violent fascism. Some sort of post-modern guilt has has kept those impulses in check for the last few decades. The continuing violence combined with the bleak prospects for integrating the muslim immigrants into modern European society could awaken the slumbering fascism. The masses still have an overwhelming majority over the muslim immigrant populations. UPDATE: I just found an article about this topic.

And what can we learn from the situation in France? I believe that this situation is a microcosm of what is happening today in the middle east. I see many parallels. Do you agree? What does this mean about our presence there? I'm not going to pretend to know all the answers, but I think we can learn from France that ignoring the problem and hoping it will go away will only make it worse.

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This may be the ultimate (fake) gadget

You all know that I love gadgets. I love the flashy lights and the beeping and all that. It may be some sort of mental problem where I am reverting back to an infantile state. Anyway, there have been rumors for years about an Apple branded phone. The rumors have not come true. However, in the last weeks a Hon Hai Precision Manufacturing let it slip that it was given a contract to build an obscene number of phones for Apple. What will this phone be like?

This ad is a fake, but I would go buy this today if it was available.


This fake iTalk phone looks like it has widescreen iTunes, calendar/scheduling/contacts, camera, and maybe even phone functionality. Creating this exact gadget may be the true purpose for which the world was formed. If only it wasn't a fake.

Hopefully the real iPhone approaches the perfection of the concept in this fake ad.

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Weekly News and Commentary

Here are some interesting stories from this week.

1. Whaaa... Robotic Hornets to kill terrorists? Sort of reminds me of this shotgun mounted on a RC helicopter. I do wish that only the good guys could use stuff like this! This sort of technology could take the suicide out of suicide bombing :(
2. The O.J. confession book/interview has been cancelled. He was going to explain how he would have killed his ex-wife and her boyfriend, if he had done it. Wow- I can't believe that anyone thought this was a good idea.
3. The Russian government seems to be killing those too critical of its policies. Just like George Bush does, oh wait- he dosen't. Didn't Michael Moore and Barbara Streisand tell me that all of our civil rights were stolen by the Patriot act? That Chimpy McHitler is a fascist that will brook no dissent? I'm sure he'll start the killing any day now.
4. Syria seems to be assassinating Lebanese polititians. It could be a play to collapse the Lebanese government. Syria could then send in 'peace-keeping' troops to regain its long-standing dominance there. Will the US fold on the UN investigation of the killings in order to get Syria's 'help' with Iraq?
   

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I'm ready when Jack needs me

I went in this week for an Ultrasound. No, don't worry, there is no chance that I am pregnant. Due to the unfortunate genetic history of my family, my heart health is questionable. My heart health is specifically dubious due to the heart-muscle spasms that I had early in 2006.

This ultrasound is actually unrelated to my death-defying personal health history. My mom asked me to have my aorta checked because my Dad had issues with his aorta, and so did his father. I asked my cardiologist about it at my last appointment, Apparently there is a syndrome for tall people. (I guess that the advantages of being tall have to be balanced out somehow). This syndrome is called Marfan Syndrome. I don't think that I have this syndrome, but being tall puts me at risk. The major heart-related concerns with Marfan are aortic dissection and aortic aneurysm. The fact that my dad had the dissection, and his dad had the aneurysm makes me go Hmmm...

So, the cardiologist wanted me to have an ultrasound. "An ultrasound," I thought to myself, "That sounds like a good way to leave work early one day next week!" And, hey, I've seen my wife have a bunch of ultrasounds when she was pregnant. They are no big deal. The tech will just touch my chest with a probe for 10-15 minutes and tell me if it's a boy- maybe even confirm the due date. I might even be able to fit in a quick nap right there on the table.

So I showed up (early) for my scan. I really like to leave work early. The guy had me take off my shirt and lie on my left side. It started off badly when he asked me to breathe all the way out and hold my breath. I, of course, breathed all the way in and held my breath. The tech kind of shook his head and said, "Um, that's breathing in." I'm sure he was thinking something like, "We've got a bright bulb here, don't we."

After that small embarrassment, things went better. He did want to tell me all about his in-laws and their 9 destitute children. But I was able to follow his simple directions correctly.

I thought I was done when he finished scanning the area of my chest where my heart resides. Then he started moving down my chest. "Uh-oh," I thought, "My aorta goes way down my torso, this could take a while!" And it did. After about 45 minutes, he appeared to be done with the scan and had moved down to the bottom of my rib cage. I wasn't able to take a nap after all, because a strange man was pressing a probe against my ribs in a manner that was not relaxing or comfortable. But I wasn't at work, so it was OK.

Then he said, "Please roll onto your back." I correctly rolled my body onto my back, once again correctly following his simple instructions. I was proud of myself and thought that the worst was over. I was wrong.

Once I was positioned (correctly) on my back, he took that probe and attempted to stick it through my solar plexus and up into my lungs. It was a bit unexpected, because up to this point, the probe had remained OUTSIDE my body. Perhaps he was practicing for his other job at a secret CIA prison, I don't know. "You might feel some pressure," he kindly warned me after my soul returned to my body. To replicate the sensation in your own home, ask a loved one to take a carrot, touch the fat end against your solar plexus, and then jam it in until it touches your spine. I discovered that the solar plexus is, shall we say, a sensitive area. He continued with the 'scan' for another 10 minutes. Those were long minutes. He kept asking me to breathe in, breathe out, exhale slowly, hold it right there, inhale slowly, etc. These requests were difficult to honor while trying not to scream like a civil war soldier undergoing an amputation.

I did get to leave work early, but the procedure took over an hour. My tummy is bruised and quite tender. But I did find out that my aorta is in great shape! My entire aorta is in great shape. Even the part under my solar plexus.

I also learned a great method for extracting information if I ever have to help Jack Bauer save the world on 24. He usually calls in a scary looking guy named Steve to torture the suspected terrorist. Maybe next season he'll call in a lanky guy named Jeff, who will be carrying nothing but a carrot.

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Battlestar Galactica: A Critique

Ah, Battlestar Galactica. As a kid I really loved to watch the zany antics of those crazy space adventurers with their rag-tag fleet. Watching the old episodes today is so painful. The plots, special effects, and acting is so poor, I can barely watch.

I was excited when the new series for the SciFi channel was announced. And I was pleasantly surprised when it turned into a great show. The acting is first-rate, the special effects often rival cinema quality and the plotlines in general are believable and engaging. What really works is that the show doesn't use the science fiction elements as a crutch. What I mean is that the fact that the people are in space, fighting self-aware robots, is almost a side issue. The story could be set in a completely different place and still work. For example, it could be set as the survivors of a destroyed village in southeast Asia in the 1700s trying to make their way to safety while being chased by soldiers from an invading empire. The technology really doesn't affect the story.

Sadly, there are problems with the story. Let's start with the basics of the plot. I apologize in advance if this gets too wordy- I really am leaving a lot out.

The basic story is that the humans created sentient machines to serve them (the Cylons). Didn't these future humans ever watch the Terminator, or the Matrix? Creating intelligent machines is never a good idea. The film-challenged humans were surprised when the machines turned against them. The surprise didn't last long, because the Cyclons nuked the billions of humans on the 12 planets and basically everyone was killed. The only survivors were on interplanetary spacecraft that banded together in a rag-tag convoy, led by a surviving military craft named Galactica. There are only 50,000 humans left alive. The entire human race is at risk because the Cylons are hot on their trail. The humans do have a goal, however. They want to find the lost 13th colony- a planet called Earth!

The biggest problem that I have with the show is that the writers for the show apparently didn't think through all of the implications of this setup. If this scenario were to actually occur, the military leader would instantly impose martial law. Food and other supplies would be rationed and personal freedoms would be sharply curtailed. Survival of the fleet and humanity would be the only concern. Individual complaints would be ignored or, more likely, eradicated to prevent any rebellion.

The writers, however, are especially concerned with the preservation of the civil rights of the surviving humans. For example, one of the early plotlines dealt with a woman who wanted an abortion. The only concerns expressed by anyone in the episode were the freedom of choice for the liberated, modern woman and the (irrational) beliefs of the religious leaders. Come on! There are only 50,000 human beings left in existence! Most of the survivors seem to be in their 20s and thirties- the biological clock is ticking, people! Any pregnancy would be critical. The government would create special privileges for any woman who was able to get pregnant, and any woman who attempted an abortion would be severely punished. I'm supposed to believe that these survivors are going to give a rats-behind about civil rights while constantly being attacked by Cylons, scrabbling for food, and trying to get an appointment with the doctor for your painful eczema?

Oh, wait, there appears to be only one surviving doctor. One doctor for 50,000 people? And this doctor seems to be well into his 50s. Wow, that has got to be a high priority. That doctor needs to be spending long hours training every bright young kid how to be a medic. It's hard enough to be seen by a doctor where I live and there are a lot more doctors here than 1 per 50,000 people. Think of the disease that could spread through the crowded ships. One doctor could easily be busy full-time just handling day-to-day stuff like broken bones and listening to coughs. Who is going to do the well-baby checkups and the daily visits by the hypochondriacs?

At least those people that can't see the doctor can go to the press with their complaints. There seem to be at least 50 reporters questioning every decision made by the military at the frequent press conferences. No way. Those reporters would be just as busy as everyone else standing in lines for their rations. And the military wouldn't have time for press conferences while trying to fight the enemy, find earth, and keeping the civilians fed, healthy, and calm. Lets go back to my southeast Asian survivors. What would happen to someone that constantly sniped and complained about the few soldiers leading and protecting them through the jungle? Pshaw! Reporters could get with the program or stay behind.

And then there is the stuff that just doesn't make sense. For example, a recent episode has a group of Cylons becoming infected with a virus that kills them quickly and painfully. (Did I mention that some of the Cylons are biological robots that are indistinguishable from humans?) It appears that the humans are immune to this new virus. [One bit of background info: When a biological Cylon dies, it's memories are uploaded via the intergalactic wi-fi network to a special ship where the software is loaded into an new, empty Cylon. ] This episode deals with the option of killing all the Cylons by killing some infected Cylon prisoners in range of the special wi-fi/birthing ship. This act would somehow transfer not only the memories and personality of the dead Cylon, but the biological virus, as well. This would then spread through all the Cylons throughout the galaxy. They never really explained the details of how this would occur. I guess the writers had heard of computer viruses and got them confused with the viruses that make bodies sick. I mean, when was the last time your computer sneezed? You can't email a chest cold. You'd think that science fiction writers would at least pass their plot ideas past a scientist or two.

The last nit-pick I have has to do with the fact that everyone and everything that the survivors have ever know has been destroyed! Their parents, spouses, children, coworkers, neighbors, and pets have all be slaughtered. Their homes, cars, careers, 401ks, and favorite vacation spots have been lost. They've been crowded into cramped quarters with a bunch of people that they don't know and have to get along with. I find it odd that no one seems to care. No one ever cries, freaks out, or even seems depressed. After an early scene showing a 'memory wall' with pictures of the dead and farewell notes, nothing is ever said about it. Everyone has put their losses behind them and are moving forward. It would seem that the survivors are, to a man, extremely well adjusted people.

So, the bottom line is that I am way too critical. I try to just enjoy shows like this but silly mistakes like this pull me out of my immersion in the story. Come on writers, think these things through a little more.

And please, keep the shows coming!

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Don't you love Capitalism!

Although I am a true Xbox believer, it's fascinating to watch the phenomenon of reselling the PS3 and Wii launch game consoles this past weekend. These poor schmucks spend days sleeping outside their local Best Buy or Target to spend $600 for a PS3 or $300 for a Wii. Did they do it for the love of games? Nope! They did it for the love of cold hard cash.

This chart shows the average selling price for the console on ebay for the last 7 days. Even now, with the PS3 selling price at ~$1200.00, that's still a $600 profit (100%). That's not too shabby for a couple of days 'work.'

What I don't understand is, why don't the manufacturers sell them at a higher price initially? For the first two months, the price could be, say, $1000.00. Why are they forfeiting their potential profits to these profiteers?

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A Conversation about Height

I would like to reproduce here, in it's entirety, an email discussion that I had with a friend a few months ago. It all began with my sending him an interesting article discussing some obviously valid scientific research. The fact that I'm 6'8" and he is 5'7" had nothing to do with it.


Start discussion:

Jeff:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2357983

"...tall people are just smarter than their height-challenged peers, a new study finds."

Friend:

I tried to find the heights of various famous thinkers in the world, but found only one. Albert Einstein was 5’-9”. Okay, he’s got about 2” on me but Stephen Hawking’s in a wheelchair that’s much shorter than I am. I’ll accept my intelligence as being somewhere in between the two. Incidentally, did you know Napoleon was 5’-6”? I’m only 1” taller than Napoleon? No wonder Steve thinks I have a complex!

Jeff:

Unfortunately, your research was incomplete. I suppose that can be explained by your limited height/intelligence. Let's look more deeply at your arguments.

Napoleon is commonly thought of as being short. However, that was not the case. The average height of French men from 1800-1820 was 5'4" to 5'5". How tall was Napoleon? Here is an interesting statement.

"Napoléon's English detractors often took pleasure in caricaturing him as below average height. What they failed to take into account was that the diminutive height of 5 feet 2 inches he measured was in the French measure of the Paris foot, which is equivalent to 12.789 inches in English measurement. In fact, Napoléon was roughly 5 feet 6 inches which was quite standard for his time. "

So, Napoleon was actually somewhat tall when compared to his peers. I suppose you could make the argument that his intelligence was still low compared to modern man due to his height deformity (5'6", wow that is short!). However, compared to everyone else at the time, his height/intelligence was over average.

Einstein lived from 1879-1955. If we follow the same logical path as with Napoleon, we must examine the common height of men during that time. Of course, you must know that Einstein was born in Germany, and later emigrated to the United States. Let us review the average height for men in those two countries during that time. In Germany, the average height for military recruits in 1900 was 5'6". In the US, the average height for adult males in 1900 was 5'6" to 5'7". Einstein, as admitted in your argument, was 5'9". That is clearly far above average for both his country of birth and his adopted homeland. How he must have towered both mentally and vertically over the diminutive pigmies that surrounded him.

Your Stephen Hawking example is just sad.

Of course, our discussion cannot be complete without looking at the current expectations for height development in the modern world. The current average height for white males in the US is 5'10". Sadly, you fall far below this mark.

Here are a couple of links that might help you...
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=96896
http://www.abchomeopathy.com/forum2.php/43229/


with these at least you'd LOOK smarter...
http://www.increasingshoes.com/

(editor's note: I really like that last zinger!)

Friend:

“height deformity” !?! “diminutive pigmies” !?! I found the following web site in hopes of refuting your obviously flawed logic, but instead I am disgusted that a support group for short people actually exists. Take a look at the environmental advantages of being short – it’s as if they’re saying “smaller is better, we have less influence on the world!” Notable short people include Dudley Moore – GREAT! >:-(

http://www.shortsupport.org/Research/samaras.html

This conversation sucks.

(editor's note: observe that as he begins to lose the argument, he substitutes emotion and false outrage for logic!)

Previous Boss (about 6'5"):

Please remember that it is only a shell. I am sure that you're comfortable with your handicap.

Good for you!

PS - you guys need more work.

end discussion

At this point we both slink back to work.

I think it is simple to decide which argument was stronger. If you don't think I won, I'll have to assume that you are short and therefore couldn't understand what we were discussing!

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Hobbies

For the last 9 years (the nine years since my oldest child was born) my hobbies have pretty much been trying to keep the kids from damaging themselves or anything around them. Then after they went to bed, I would be too exhausted to do much else. It is really amazing how much effort you have to put into small children.

This last summer I suddenly realised that the kids are old enough to start enjoying participating in some activities that are fun for adults as well. This realization bloomed into a really fun summer of hobbies with my boys. The oldest has taken up tennis, so we would go often to the park to practice. My neighbor bought a remote controlled airplane, so I finally caved and bought one as well (I have always wanted one). The boys are old enough to last a decent distance on a bike, so we went on a lot of rides. I've started going shooting again, after a long hiatus. We also rented a boat and some seadoos, which we all loved. There was also quite a bit of hiking, even though we couldn't get too far without someone getting tired. And of course, camping.

As I'm writing this, I'm realizing that I have a lot of material to write about each one of these hobbies. Way to much material for this one post. Watch this space for more exiting details to come!

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The Days of our Lives

OK, I admit it. For a period of time, early in my marriage, I watched a soap opera on daytime TV. I'm sure you've heard of it. Days of our Lives. Why can't Marlena choose between John and Roman? Can't Billie just leave Bo and Hope alone for love's sake? And Stafano! What a dastardly villain! (editor's note: characters and storylines may be from the early 90's. I have no idea what's been going on since then.)

Soap operas are, correctly, criticised for being cheesy and pandering to the Harlequin romance market. They are basically escapist fiction meant for lonely housewives. But, man, don't start watching one- you'll get hooked. I don't know why Days (as it is called) was so addicting. But I'm free now. Free to watch quality weekly drama series like Lost and Heroes.

I absolutely love the show "Lost." Lost has been such an amazing experience. The fascinating characters with intersecting backstories stuck on a bizarre island with the menacing "Others". The slowly unraveling mysteries have proven to be irresistible. I listen to weekly podcasts where other obsessed people delve into obscurities like book references and wardrobe choices to support their improbable theories. I love it! There are websites and discussion boards where you can go to try to figure out what things like the blast door map image (on the right) mean. The production values are amazing and the camera work is stunning. It's just a great show.

A newcomer to my favorites is the show "Heroes." This show is basically X-men serialized for TV. It is really well done. All my buddies at work watch it and we have a blast discussing it the next day. Unlike Lost, the plot moves rapidly and every week things happen that advance the story. The special effects are great and the cast does a great job. The mysteries are not as deep and the conspiracy seems simpler than in Lost, but the action makes up for it.

Both Lost and Heroes are critical successes watched by men and women the world over.

Then: Someone at work accused me of watching soap operas. This was a challenge to my manhood! These, I insisted, are great dramas. And I walked away full of righteous indignation.

Then: I thought more about it.

Are these shows really that different from soap operas like Days?

This quote from the wikipedia entry on soap operas is devastating.

A soap opera is an ongoing, episodic work of fiction, usually broadcast on television or radio. Radio entertainment has existed long enough for audiences to recognize them simply by the term soap. What differentiates a soap from other television drama programs is their open-ended nature. Plots run concurrently, intersect, and lead into further developments. An individual episode of a soap opera will generally switch between several different concurrent story threads that may at times interconnect and affect one another, or may run entirely independent of each other. Each episode may feature some of the show's current storylines but not always all of them. There is some rotation of both storylines and actors so any given storyline or actor will appear in some but usually not all of a week's worth of episodes. Soap operas rarely "wrap things up" storywise, and generally avoid bringing all the current storylines to a conclusion at the same time. When one storyline ends there are always several other story threads at differing stages of development. Soap opera episodes invariably end on some sort of cliffhanger.

Jeepers. That describes Lost to a 'T.' I mean, that last episode of season 3 had love triangles, make-out scenes, evil villains, lots of close ups of people yelling, tons o'melodrama, and a surprise cliffhanger ending. It could fit right in on Days.

Is it just production values and plot choices that differentiate my excellent Lost and Heroes, from daytime dreck like Days? Did the producers of Lost simply realize that the addictive nature of the open-ended, plot-twisting soap opera could be translated to a successful evening drama? Are my tastes in entertainment ultimately the same as the 80-something widow watching 'as the world turns' while getting her weekly hairdo at the beauty parlor? Is my manhood truly in question? Should I start wearing pink heels and a feather boa? The answers are elusive.

I'd think about this some more, but I've got to figure out how Desmond seems to be able to see into the future(did he travel forward in time when the button wasn't pushed and the hatch imploded?) and if there is indeed a third group of people on the island(who kidnapped the people from the 'tailies' camp the first night, and where are the missing children?) Oh, and on Heroes- what is Micha's power beyond fixing broken pay phones, and does Mohinder have a power? Does having your dead sister show you events from the past qualify as a power?

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Gifts for my Lover...

Christmas is coming up pretty soon. It's the time when my wife and I start thinking about presents for our families, our boys, and each other. Both my wife and I are pretty picky at what we like for our big holiday gifts. I like high priced, carefully researched gadgets. She likes very specific styles of clothes and shoes. These are not easy gifts with which to surprise your sweetie.

My wife and I have slowly evolved our method of gift-giving to each other over our 13 years of marriage. Here is a brief history lesson.

The Newlywed Phase: We would spend hours searching various stores for gifts we just knew the other would love. Then we would have to endure the crushing disappointment of that look. You know, the look of "oh no, did he/she keep the receipt?" These years are not remembered fondly. At least not for the gifts.

The Transition Phase: We would give each other detailed hints as to what gifts we would like. This would result in long hours of searching to find the exact version of the desired item. But at least the other person liked the gift. This did cause some gifts to be forgotten or be incorrect.

The Realist Phase(aka, The Years of Efficiency): This is our current phase. Neither of us has a lot of free time to shop and search. Now we buy ourselves gifts, let the other person wrap them, and try to act surprised when we open them. Have we lost something? Does it show some sort of fundamental breakdown in our relationship? Maybe. But at least I don't have to see that look.

So, what is the next phase of gift giving? I'm not sure, but if I had to guess I would say that it would be:

The Kids are in College Phase (aka, No Money for a Gift for You Phase).

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2 years later...

I signed up for this blog almost 2 years ago! Apparently signing up is easier than actually posting. I am an avid reader of blogs and I find it amazing how many people are willing to spend so much time doing it for free.

Anyway, my brother has recently started blogging, and he has done such an amazing job that I am going to give it a go.

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