Mommy, How Do You Spell "Transmogrifier?"

Turns out, the Pillowfight Fairy's favorite theologian also happens to be her favorite inventor. She thought the Transmogrifier was a great idea. However, since she didn't have cardboard boxes, she had to make due with what she does have: white typing paper, tape, and crayons.


Just so you know, she did in fact have to ask Mommy how to spell the word "Transmogrifier."

Apparently it works, too. Both of the girls were using it today. One of them had transmogrified into a cat, and the other into a mouse; whereupon they chased each other all through the house. (At this point Mommy told them to calm down a bit, and then they turned back to normal.)

So after I came home and saw her handiwork, the Fairy explained to me her new strategy for keeping her younger sister from playing with her stuff: she would first transmogrify into a bee, then sting her sister; then she would transmogrify back, and say something bossy like "That's for doing what you shouldn't have."

I didn't mention it at the time, but maybe I should have: not even transmogrifying into another animal would save her from the wrath of her parents' discipline if she tried such a thing.

Maybe it still has a few kinks to work out. ;-)



(P.S. I just discovered my spell checker doesn't like the word transmogrifier! Who programmed this thing?)

Carnival of Homeschooling Up at the Common Room

This week's Carnival of Homeschooling is up over at The Common Room. Alas, I didn't have any posts to feature this time around. But there were some good ones there that caught my eye.

There's this one from The Thinking Mother, which is particularly interesting given the subject of my previous post. This one takes the opposite approach: that with the existence of DirecTV (Satellite TV, which breaks the cable companies' monopoly) and TiVos (which allow you easily to record what you want when it's on, and then view it at your leisure while bleeping commercials), there's actually a whole lot of interesting, good programming on--on for-profit channels like Discovery and Animal Planet (for science), the History and Biography channels (for history), the Bravo channel (the arts), and so forth. And she makes the point that much of this programming has, in many cases, been superior to what's available on PBS. She also addresses the point that there are some advantages that TV documentaries have over books:

There is nothing like an exciting show about the Vikings to inspire children to want to learn more and read more about Vikings. There is nothing like seeing video footage of sunken ships and to hear interviews with treasure hunters.

Oh, hit me where I live, why don't you...

I don't doubt any of this. And this is definitely something good, that I recognize that Tonya and I gave up when we decided not to have a TV in our lives. And this is one reason that, while I have developed a loathing for TV, I fully respect the decisions of those who decide to keep one in their houses for educational reasons. Truth be told, the TV can be a powerful educational device, if used properly.

But... even though we acknowledge that we have made a sacrifice of something that could be worthwhile, and we do miss some of these better shows, we don't regret our overall decision. There are good shows on; there's also a lot of highly-entertaining, highly-addicting dreck that the conscientious viewer has to sift through to find the good stuff. And there is the never-ending temptation to have it on, to just watch one more show; I'd think my limited family time is much better spent playing with the kids in the backyard on these warm summer evenings.

Anyway, here's another post from the Carnival that I liked, by FatcatPaulanne. It details her journey as a homeschooling mother. I find I'm always interested in reading these kinds of stories; they're all so different. In some cases, the parents knew from the beginning they would homeschool; in other cases, they never wanted to, and they resisted right up until the moment they decided that action must be taken to salvage our kid's future and they took the kids out of school.

FatcatPaulanne is somewhere in the middle; her kids went to preschools (and some of them dropped out; imagine trying to explain that my kid is a preschool dropout!), and some of them went to public schools in the earlier grades. They soldiered on until the oldest was on the verge of middle school, but then decided that it was time. (She said she worried about what her husband would say about her desire to homeschool, until he said, "I don't have one good memory from middle school." That settled it....)

Anyway there's good stuff there.


...


One more post worth sharing: not from the Carnival, but from Dana, a regular in the online homeschooling community. She writes about the opposition and antipathy that nearly every homeschooler eventually gets to experience over their decisions.

One thing we homeschoolers deal with a lot is people who take our decision to homeschool almost as though it were an attack on them and their values. It is as though by making the decisions we do, to take our children out of the traditional classroom, we are implicitly condemning them and the more traditional decisions they have made.

Dana explores the idea that there may actually be something to this; that, in some indirect way, our decision to homeschool can legitimately be interpreted as an indictment of society. That is, by choosing to homeschool, we have implicitly judged the educational systems in this country--and indeed, our very child-rearing models--as flawed; we are passing judgment on the status quo, finding it inadequate, breaking with society, and searching for solutions that are highly countercultural:

When we advocate for acceptance of homeschooling, we are advocating for a philosophical shift in the nation. We are asking good parents who make decisions in the best interests of their children to reconsider that decision. Not directly. At least not those of us who advocate for homeschooling as opposed to evangelizing the practice. But we bring to the forefront the fact that other options are available....

We are challenging some pretty fundamental beliefs about how children should be raised and how families should be structured. We are questioning the frenzied pace of American life and putting a higher priority on a value most Americans share: family. Maybe that is a little too…uncomfortable.

And the point is, this challenge is leveled merely by the existence of people who are willing to opt out of the system. Imagine: people out there exist who are willing to turn down a free education for their children, because they find something lacking in it, or object to the kind of lifestyle that accepting that "free" education means for the development of their families! Who do they think they are? What made them so superior to the rest of us?

Food for thought.

Minds Like Steel Traps--For The Wrong Stuff

When you raise your kids in a way that's in some way different than the way everyone else is raising their kids, you often have the chance to perform psychological experiments on them.

(Psst... don't tell the APA....)

Ahem. What I mean by this, is that your kids are being exposed to a different set of influences than much of the population. So when your kid learns something new, you have a chance to reflect, "Now where did my kid learn this?" and get answers that are often different than most parents would--and this can tell you something about how your kids learn, and what they're learning.

Now, my kids are being raised in a household that does not have television. They have videos, but no television. But occasionally we go on trips to visit family members who have the set on for much of the time; and not only that, they have a different set of videos than we do.

We went down to Southern California a couple of weeks ago and spent some time with my Aunt. Now, this Aunt takes care of my nephew (age four) on a regular basis, since both of his parents teach in the public high schools. And this little boy has his favorite television shows picked out, and his favorite videos already loaded into the DVD changer.

On this particular trip, we actually didn't watch all that much TV, or that many videos. At least, not more than we do on a usual day, in which the kids get to watch one video (usually half an hour) in the mornings, and another one in the afternoons. But it was television (un-pauseable, and un-replayable), it was shows they only rarely see, and it was episodes they hadn't seen yet. And the videos were (for the most part) different videos than what they normally watch when they're at home. So with only a few exceptions, they were seeing all-new stuff, and they were watching it once.

And my wife and I were amazed at how much the girls picked up on one viewing. Here are some examples.

A few days ago, the girls were counting some objects, and suddenly the Adrenaline Junkie (age three) started up an evil, cackling laugh after every number. The Pillowfight Fairy (age five) asked her, "Are you being The Count?" and she replied "Yeah." We found this noteworthy, because we don't watch Sesame Street at home. The only place we can think of where they could have learned about The Count was at my Aunt's place, on one viewing of Sesame Street. (To be fair, they may have seen it when we were down there back in January--but that's a long time ago for a three-year-old. Something has to be pretty special for a kid that age to remember it in detail for that long.)

(And since that time, we've been finding clips on You Tube of The Count and showing them to the girls. They love them. They particularly like this one and this one.)

Well, just before we jumped in the van and started heading back up north, while Mommy and Daddy were loading our luggage into the van, the Pillowfight Fairy was watching a PBS show called Super Why, which is intended to teach early reading skills (and perhaps some critical thinking). Now, in this show, there are four main super-hero characters, each with their own super powers: one has the power of Reading, one has the power of Spelling, and so forth. And these characters tell the viewing children (referred to as "Super-You"), that they have the Power to Help.

Anyway, I caught a little of this show (which I'd never seen before) as I was wandering in and out of the house loading up the van. And I hate to say it, but it was annoying. Perhaps it has some educational merit, although I didn't see enough of it to make a judgment (although on my first impression, it seemed to place a lot more emphasis on special effects and entertainment value than education. Note that this is just a first impression, however). I don't even think our little girl had the chance to finish watching the episode, as we had to hit the road. She got perhaps the first ten minutes, and was rather miffed that she had to miss the rest.

But even after having seen no more than ten minutes of this show, it was amazing how much of the storyline and characterizations she'd picked up. As we pulled out onto the freeway, she was telling us all about those characters, and what their names were, and what their super-powers were, and how they got around (those funny little spaceships), and where they were going, and she proudly announced that "My super-power is to help." So I tried to remind her that, "Honey, you already have the power to read." But she wouldn't hear it: "No, that's Super-Why's power. My power is the power to help."

Et cetera.

Now, I don't think it was the intention of the creators of Super Why to convince my little five-year-old daughter that she didn't have the power to read. But I think it's pretty obvious that, in at least one way, these shows are doing exactly what they were designed to do: they are grabbing the attention of the kids, using all the motion and action and colorful sets and strange characters, long enough so that some kind of information can be piped into their little heads.

But at the same time, speaking as someone who hasn't had a TV in the house for nearly the last decade-and-a-half, that there's something about this that rubs me the wrong way.

To explain what I mean, consider the typical commercials that show up on non-public TV. Most people don't think much about them; yeah, they're there, they're just part of the background. You're used to them. They present an opportunity to visit the restroom; or, if you're watching a show saved on a TIVO, you can just skip past them. But most people think nothing of them, unless a particular ad happens to be just a little more witty, or a little more annoying, than all the others. Otherwise they're just part of the wallpaper.

However, not having had a TV for so long, I find I've developed an almost visceral loathing of the ads. I'm no longer accustomed to all the quick cuts, and the garish colors, and the loud, percussive, dissonant music; and the hard-sell techniques that are designed to play on my emotions? I find that I occasionally have to leave the room when the commercials come on to save my sanity.

And I don't think this is just me trying to make the case that I'm somehow more enlightened than the rest of the plebians out there who haven't evolved to the point where they've scrapped their TVs yet. This is simply a case of my not being accustomed to it anymore. I assure you, I can be just as plebian as the rest of you.

(Except for the Opera stuff. And the harp. But aside from all that, I'm really just a redneck at heart.)

Well, I find this same visceral loathing starting to kick in as I watch the kids shows. Again, it's the garishness, the in-your-face quality of the whole thing, the really-simplistic storylines, the intentionally-annoying voices, the so-cute-you-want-to-freak-out characters, the same hard sell techniques now applied to educational ends instead of product hawking, and so forth. I'm going to scream if I have to watch another Elmo's World segment on Sesame Street. (And don't get me started about the time that I distinctly heard Elmo tell someone, "You did good!" Gaaaacck! Cringe-inducing....)

But the girls (and the boy, to a lesser degree befitting the fact that he's only sixteen months old) are absolutely enthralled when this stuff comes on. They don't want it to stop. They can't think of anything else when it comes on; the rest of the room vanishes for them, and they begin floating in this spiritual plane where it's only their disembodied minds, in communion with the TV.

As the Pillowfight Fairy's favorite theologian put it,

Oh greatest of the mass media, thank you for elevating emotion, reducing thought and stifling imagination. Thank you for the artificiality of quick solutions and for the insidious manipulation of human desires for commercial purposes. This bowl of lukewarm tapioca represents my brain. I offer it in humble sacrifice. Bestow thy flickering light forever.

...


So, my dear internets... Am I the only one out there who thinks this way (aside from my lovely wife, of course, who's with me the whole way on this), or are there others out there who also suspect that there's something wrong, something developmentally unnatural even in the widely-acknowledged "educational" TV? Is my visceral reaction against this stuff something that's natural and healthy, that I experience now because I've pretty much been re-sensitized to it by being off TV for so long, or is my visceral reaction--even against PBS educational TV--the result of some kind of snobbery?

Let me know, I want to hear your opinions.

Overheard Today

Pillowfight Fairy: "I'm going to make a science fair project."

Mommy: "Oh, really? What are you going to do?"

PF: "I'm going to pop popcorn with the lid off!"

M: "Hm. Did you get this idea from Calvin?"

PF: "Yes."

Miscellaneous Links

Well, my dear internets (as my Sister-In-Law often puts it), I have a handful of links to put out there. These are things of interest that popped up over the last week, that I've been neglecting up until this point. So without further ado:

My lovely wife, who usually only posts a few times a month, has posted twice in the last week already. Her first post was entitled Change Happens in Very Little Time, and it has to do with the fact that the kids are all seeming to be making advances simultaneously. We've noticed before that growth and development in our kids comes in spurts and jumps, rather than smoothly; it's as though some kind of switch has been thrown in their brains, enabling them to do things one day that they were utterly unable to do the day before. Well, we've had a lot of those switches being thrown lately, and we're in the process of trying to come to terms with these seemingly new kids we have running around. Along those lines, she posts an update on how the Happy Boy is changing and growing.

On a side note: you know, the name "Happy Boy" hasn't been completely descriptive now for some time. He's only happy when he's doing the things that he wants to do, and so often what he wants to do is unacceptable. So we wind up saying no a lot, and this often ends in a screaming fit. He has incredible focus for a little boy; he decides he wants to do something that he shouldn't, and it's really really hard to distract him from it. And one of those things he wants to do, is put absolutely everything in his mouth. Now, most kids go through this; but he does it a whole lot more than his sisters ever did. This is especially an issue now that our fruit trees are all covered with unripe fruit. Every time he goes outside, he wants to pick these little green globules off the tree and start gnawing on them, and we can't convince him to stop. So, I may well start using a new name for him: if you start seeing me refer to him from here on out as The Omnivore, you'll understand. ;-)

Next up, I realized I didn't post a link to last week's Loser Letter, by Mary Eberstadt, over at National Review. Last week's had to do with religion and good works, and this week's had to do with religion and art.

Third: I realized I didn't post a link to last week's Carnival of Homeschooling! It's here. My own post entitled Every Once in a While, about my eldest daughter teaching her sister to read, is featured.

Enjoy!

How to Deflate One's Ego

So Friday, I actually did it. After the last couple of years, in which taking the van to the dealership for maintenance turned into a game of three-card-monte as we tried to shift child-safety seats from one vehicle to another, we finally put into operation our plan to end this problem once and for all: I took the van in, with my new bike in the back. Then I rode the bike home while the dealership worked on the van.

I'd been wondering how I'd do. It seemed like a bit of a long ride, on some pretty major streets. I haven't been doing a whole lot of exercise lately, and I was a little concerned that I would wipe myself out if I wasn't careful--very bad, especially since I knew that I'd have to return on bike later in the day. So I took it a little easy. And there is some construction going on over part of the route, with the traffic routed onto the bike lane; I was sharing the road with some mighty big vehicles that were riding awfully close. Still I persevered.

You know, when you go everywhere in a car, you tend to see the world as a whole lot more flat than it really is. When you are on a bike, that illusion goes away really fast, but it is replaced by another one: like one's grandparents, you start to see the whole of existence as uphill both ways. Anyway, I think the dealership is actually at a lower altitude than my home (which is, after all, in a city called Citrus Heights). So when I finally got home from the dealership, my legs felt like finger-Jello.

But I'd done it. I was halfway done with my trek! (Note: trek in this context refers to the voyage, not the bike manufacturer. Besides, my bike is a Fuji, not a Trek.)

I felt good.
Ok, I thought; maybe I'm not ready for the Tour de France yet, but give me time. :-)

So just before lunch the dealership called me back. The van was ready! I decided that I'd rather not have to ride on a full stomach, so I'd pick up the van before eating lunch. I hopped on the bike and took off.

This time the ride felt a little easier. I figured there were two possible reasons for this: either my body is getting in shape really fast, or the trip back to the dealership is more downhill than up.

And this time I tried to time my trip. I didn't do so precisely, but my best guess is that it took upwards of fifteen, downwards of twenty minutes. It also seemed to me that there were fewer bike lanes on the outward journey than the homeward one. One doesn't often notice these things, until one has to share the road with all those big, annoying vehicles.

(Instead of being one of those big, annoying vehicles, in which case you think: Man, those cyclists have a death wish.)

So I got the van and I drove home. This time, I decided to keep a close eye on the van's trip meter, to see exactly what the distance was. Would it be closer to ten miles? Eight? Five?

Four point four.

That's it?

I got all worked up over a measley four-point-freakin'-four miles? So here I am, fretting about how I'm going to get my van over to a dealership and back, when I think it's oh-so-far away, when in fact I could have walked the stupid thing in less than an hour and a half?

Man, I feel like such a wuss. Ok, forget the Tour de France. Any halfway respectable bike race in the land goes, like, ten times as far minimum (sometimes thirty times as far). Yeah, I'm about as likely to do the Tour de France as I am the Iditarod.

Four point four. Of course, to be fair, I actually rode that distance at a rate of approximately 15 miles per hour, which isn't that bad; and I rode that distance both ways, so that works out to eight-point-eight on the day. With a three-hour rest in the middle so I don't get my heart rate too high, mind you.

Geez.

And to add insult to injury, I have conclusively demonstrated that me Bums are definitely not made of Steel. Regarding that bike seat, that I mentioned a few posts back: How do people sit on that really skinny thing for extended lengths of time? I was feeling a little tender back there after a mere 8.8 miles; how do people sit on those things for 30 or 120 miles or whatever it is? As per Arby's comment in my last post, that is not a good kind of hurt. The term "Lift and Separate" is intended to apply to an entirely different part of the anatomy. I find the last couple of days, I've been trying to find the most padded surfaces to sit on that I can find.

You know what it is, though: It wouldn't hurt so bad if I wasn't six-foot-one and 200 pounds. Now, 200 pounds isn't an outrageous weight for someone who's six-foot-one, but it's a whole lot more than I weighed the last time I rode a bike for any distance. I have, quite literally, put on about fifty-five pounds since high school, or thirty pounds since college. I was quite the beanpole then. That makes a difference when you're trying to sit on this little wedge.

Anyway, even with my ego duly deflated, I'm happy with my purchase. Well, I'm pretty happy with my purchase. Of course, as anyone with a new hobby can attest, you're never truly happy until you have all the accessories to go along with the purchase. I can see now why cyclists wear goggles, for one thing; even when you're just a lardbutt like me, tooling around at fifteen miles an hour, the wind on your eyes makes it hard to see. And I can start to see why people use those funny biking shoes with the pedal clips. And it would probably be nice to have a slightly bigger seat (to match my slightly bigger seat). And one of those water-bottle racks would be right handy. And... and...

How do people ever find happiness in their lives without having all this stuff? ;-)

(Note: this is a Rhetorical Question. This question is pure sarcasm. Do not attempt to answer it in the comments.)

Yes, I'm happy with my purchase. And if I can get in the habit of giving it a spin even for ten minutes or so each evening (since that's about all I expect my family duties will spare me), I might actually have a chance to lose a little of that deadweight and tighten up those other parts of my anatomy.

At least until the rainy season hits, that is. Then I'll have to think of something else to do with myself.

Addendum to Ow...

In light of my previous post, I just remembered a little something I read today. From National Review's group blog, The Corner, comes this post from John Derbyshire, one of the more colorful characters in their stable of writers. I can completely understand where he's coming from here, and my wife can't, so yes--I suspect it really is "a guyish kind of thing to do".

To get the full impact, you need to read it in a very dry, droll English accent, since Mr. Derbyshire is in fact a naturalized citizen, an immigrant from the Mother Country.

Ouch! [John Derbyshire]

I did a crazy thing yesterday: I walked from my home out in Long Island's Suffolk County, to Manhattan. It's thirty miles from my door to the middle of the Queensboro Bridge. I just wanted to see if I could do it. I could, just, though the last two miles were sheer concentrated will power. Took me fourteen hours, including rest stops.

This seems to be a guyish kind of thing to do. At any rate, Mrs. S. didn't get it at all.

She: "Why on earth would you want to do a crazy thing like that?"

Me: "To test myself."

She [a great Woody Allen fan]: "Next time let me know, I'll give you a written."

Today of course comes the hangover. There is a small region on the anterior surface of my pancreas — the omental tuberosity, I think it's called — that is pain-free, but every other part of me hurts like a girl dog. I seem to be missing a toenail, too. Oh well: no pain, no gain.

Ow. Not Bad, But Ow Nonetheless.

So today I was just like a kid with a new bicycle.

I couldn't wait to get home from work so I could ride it! The hours passed slowly....

Ok, then I got home. But! It appears that California was having a weird election today that Tonya and I completely forgot about until this afternoon, when Tonya called me at work and said, "Did you remember that we had an election today?" And I was thinking, didn't we just have one? Yes, we did; but this is a different one. Go figure.

So I got home and ate dinner with the family, and then did a quick trip over to the polling place, all the while thinking about that new bicycle.... Oh, let this not take long, so that I may go home and have enough time to ride a little before it's time to start getting everyone ready for bed!

Turns out I didn't have anything to worry about. There was no line. It appears that Tonya and I were just about the only people that remembered there was an election today. And it turns out that we voted exactly the opposite on the two ballot propositions, so our votes canceled out, so we may as well just have forgotten about it too. Again, go figure.

So then, I was ready to ride! Ah, but then my wife's wifely/maternal instincts kicked in, and she reminded me that I hadn't had all that much time to spend with the Happy Boy lately. After all, I was at the bike shop all evening yesterday. So could you please spend some time with your 16-month-old son?

Ok, kid, it's time to learn about grip shifters. So I took the kid outside, with the bike and a bunch of tools, and spent the next ten minutes or so trying to keep him from eating them. Eventually the girls came out too, as did Mommy, so I had a little backup. All three kids were of course fascinated by this new bicycle--"It's very big!"--and wanted to ride their own. So the Pillowfight Fairy got out her bike and helmet, and the Adrenaline Junkie got out her tricycle, and we all pedaled around the backyard walkway and patio for a while while the Happy Boy ran around happily chasing us.

I confess, I left a few skid marks on my new patio too, so it's not just the Fairy's fault.

So this went on until about 8:00, when the backyard sprinklers came on. The girls put their wheels away, while I decided: It's time for a real ride. A short one, but a real one.

I said, "I'm going to pedal around the block." So Mommy gathered the kids and stood out in the front yard to wait for me, and I went.

So here's the map (via Mapquest), with all the street names removed so you can't find where I live. (Hint: it's the black X). The path, marked out on the map above, is one that my family uses for walks on a regular basis, and it takes about half an hour--walking at the speed of an often-balky five-year-old girl. My wife has driven at least part of the route, measuring with the car's trip-meter, so she thinks this route is about 1.2 miles. Note that this is not a flat neighborhood; there are uphills and downhills. (Obviously, since it is a closed loop, the amount of up must equal the amount of down; otherwise, I would just have discovered a perpetual motion machine.)

I did it in maybe five minutes, which isn't bad for someone who hasn't been exercising--especially given the hills. And the exertion felt really, really good.

Well, it felt good until I was done. Then, it sort-of crept up on me....

You know those Bums of Steel that I was mentioning in my last post? My best guess is that tomorrow, I will have Bums of Pudding. Covered in Ants. And I've been sucking down whatever liquid comes in reach for the last hour or so. And making everyone else stand on the other side of the room, lest they radiate heat on me.

Yes, I need to do this more often. A lot more often. And maybe I'll take the trip from and to the Automobile dealership this weekend a lot slower than what I did today.

Still, it definitely qualifies as the proverbial Good Kind of Hurt.

I Have a New Toy

So, we've had this recurring dilemma for the past few years.

The dilemma is this: what do we do when we need to take the minivan in for maintenance? I mean, Honda Odysseys are pretty reliable and all, but you still have to take them in occasionally for all-day or a half-day maintenance checks.

And our other car is a little itty-bitty Toyota Corolla, for goodness sakes. There's no way that you can fit three child safety seats in that thing.

So: how do we get our minivan to the dealership for maintenance, and then get the driver of the minivan home in a reasonable time; and then get him back to the shop in the afternoon when the maintenance is done--all without leaving a kid unattended, and given that the only vehicle we have that can seat all kids in back seats at the same time is the minivan that's getting fixed?

Hmm. You could... er... maybe if you carry the two... T'aint so easy.

It reminds me of that puzzle where you have a goat, a cabbage, and a wolf, and you're trying to get them across the river in a boat that can carry you and one other item, and you're trying to keep the cabbage from being eaten by the goat, and the goat from being eaten by the wolf, and (presumably) the wolf from being eaten by the cabbage. And you probably don't want to be eaten by the wolf either. Only in our case, it's like you have two small boats, and three cabbages, and... Ok, that metaphor is shot. But you get the idea.

Options? Well,

• The dealership doesn't provide loaner cars, and they don't provide any kind of taxi service to their maintenance customers. One can rent a small vehicle in a pinch, but that's a little expensive.
• I'm not sure that mass transit in this area has decent enough coverage. This is something of a sprawling suburban area, and such areas tend to have limited bus service. And even if the service exists, there's no telling how long it would take.
• It's really too far to walk. I mean, I could do it if I had to; but it would take a few hours, and by the time I got home, I'd have to start back.
• We hate to arrange a babysitter to look after the kids, just so we can take the car in to get it fixed. I mean, if we had gumption, Tonya and I could turn this into an event: take the whole day off and just have a date for the two of us, while the van gets fixed. (That's actually a pretty good idea, come to think of it.) Alas, we don't often have that much gumption. And it's a rather strange idea to schedule one's romantic life around your automotive maintenance needs. Works for some, I suppose; if this is you, God bless you! :-)

So this leaves, um...

This leaves the brainstorm I had while lying in bed Saturday, while trying to justify staying horizontal just five minutes longer. Incidentally, there have been some great scientific insights that have led to breakthroughs, that came by way of dreams to the scientists in question. I understand the discovery of the chemical structure of Benzene was discovered thanks to an insight from a dream. Perhaps my own insight wasn't so momentous in the grand scheme of things, but it appears to solve our problem once and for all.

The solution? Get myself a bicycle, for crying out loud.


...


"What?" I can hear you yell. "That's it? That's the great solution that solves your problem? We thought it would be something momentous, like getting a horse or a jet-pack or something!"

Well, for this family, it is pretty momentous. I mean, perhaps it sounds from reading this blog that we're pretty happenin' people, but we're actually pretty hidebound. Neither Tonya nor I has owned a bicycle since we were kids. (Although Tonya has me beat in the coolness department here: as a kid, she used to ride a unicycle. I ain't riding one of those all the way home from the dealership, though.) Fact is, bicycles haven't been part of our regular, everyday lives for nearly the last two decades. And while we still remember how to ride them, we just don't think about them very often. And up to this point, we haven't had any compelling reason to think to ourselves, "I think we should go get some bicycles today!" We always had something else to do--preferably something that took less money.

But getting a bike was one of those things that had been bouncing around way back (way back) in the recesses of my cerebral cortex for some time now. After all, my eldest daughter has been learning how to ride, bit by bit; and I figured it would be nice if she and I could eventually do a little together. It always gives a bit more motivation, if there's someone doing it with you.


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So today, after making sure that Mommy was Ok with taking care of the kids during the evening, I went over to a local bike shop, and picked out a reasonably inexpensive Fuji-brand bicycle with an aluminum frame and twenty-one-speed twist-shifters. It's more of a street bike than a mountain bike, which is fine with me; the salesman said that this kind of bike shouldn't be taken off into the wilds, but a well-established dirt bike path (like the trails that run alongside our local river) should be fine. The bike is solid frame with no shocks, which is fine with me; none of the bikes I learned to ride on as a kid had shocks, and here I am today a Daddy of three, so I'm good with that.

It was a little intimidating being in the bike store, though, when for the last two decades I've only even been on a bike once every year or two; it's like I was in a whole different culture, and didn't know which fork to use with the salad and which to use with the fish. Which seat do I get? ("Chances are, you'll go through several before you find one that you're really comfortable with," they said. Great.) Which helmet do I use? (Eventually got one that didn't hurt when I put it on my head and cinched it up tight. Apparently I have a bumpy noggin.) Which bike lock? Am I going to be riding this thing enough to need a portable bike pump, or will the one we have at home be sufficient? Am I going to be out late enough to require lights and/or reflectors? Am I going to need the hands off GPS with Bluetooth, optional chrome trim and Oak Leaf Clusters?

Aaauuugh!!!

(Ok, I made that last one up. But I did see there, in place of a bell, this little plastic panda-bear you can mount on your handlebar that lets out a loud squeeeeeeak when you squeeze it. I didn't get it, but boy, I wanted to. The Pillowfight Fairy would have loved it.)

But all those questions duly answered (by postponing them until much, much later), I went ahead and got the bike. Now, visions of Physical Fitness are dancing in my brain! Now shall I have the opportunity to have Rock Hard Abs, Buns of Steel, and Thighs like pilings! Now shall I have the opportunity to slim back down to my fighting trim, so I fit into all those goofy clothes I wore back in High School!

Um... No.

(Incidentally, every time I hear the term "Buns of Steel", I send myself into fits of giggles when I reflect that across the pond, they use the term "Bums" instead--but that there's a very subtle difference in meaning between our "Buns" and their "Bums", of which any American who watches enough British Television is at least dimly aware. Imagine being the proud possessor of Bums of Steel! Imagine Jane Fonda exhorting you not to give up just yet, because if you finish these exercises, your Bums will be made of Steel! And to get the full effect, you don't speak of them with the possessive pronoun my, you use the formulation (best rendered in a Cockney accent) "Me bums are made o' steel" when explaining your unusual anatomy and your airport security troubles to your friends. As I said, this whole line of thought gets me every time.)

Where was I?

Oh yes. Anyway. I'm now the proud owner of a new bicycle, after nearly two decades of slovenly living. In the spirit of Calvin's dad, I'm officially ready to have my mid-life crisis sponsored by the bike shop. ;-)

Election Follies, and Lots Of Other Good Stuff From My Doppelganger

Ok, so May wasn't so good of a blogging month for this blogger. Prior to May I'd been managing pretty close to one post a day, with a couple of time-off days each month. But with creeping writers' block, and with the sense that "No, I've already blogged about that, I can't do that again," and just general ennui, it had been getting harder and harder to figure out what to write about--or to gin up the energy to sit down at the keyboard and just type. So I only managed 18 posts in the month of May.

And I know that several of you fellow bloggers are sitting out there thinking, "18 posts in a month! That's just downright obsessive. Where do you get the time to do all that--let alone the energy or the ideas?" And you'd probably be right. Nevertheless, my self-assigned benchmark is one post per day, and in the month of May I seriously blew it.

Perhaps out of psychic sympathy, my Georgia-based Doppelganger decided to pick up the slack, with a whole bunch of meaty posts this last week. He posted a very amusing account of his family's recent appliance-replacement capers (in which they had to replace a refrigerator and a stove, because the old ones gave up the ghost at the same time).

Then there's this post, in which he muses about the different rates at which his (homeschooled) children are learning their lessons. Here's Chris's theory: It appears that his oldest kid is the "trailblazer;" it takes her the longest to learn things, not because she isn't smart, but because the parents are doing everything for the first time with her; her siblings, on the other hand, are picking up the lessons by osmosis--just by hanging around while the eldest is learning them--and this advantage helps them to learn new skills just that much faster. (The eldest kid, of course, thinks this is entirely unfair.) Anyway, Chris asks his readers to sound off on whether his theory sounds right. I responded in his comments, saying that his theory is probably pretty close, and adding a few other ideas--including a reference to yesterday's post about my eldest kid teaching her younger sibling how to read.


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And then there's this post.

Like my Doppelganger, I don't do a whole lot of political blogging. It's not that I don't have strong political views--and anyone who follows this blog regularly can probably figure them out. Rather, it's that I think that politics has become so poisonous in this country lately that I hesitate to start blogging about it, for my and my family's sanity and safety.

I will occasionally write about political philosophy, for example; there are those times where politics isn't just a spectator sport, times when stuff that goes on in the capitols has real effects on real people. I wrote a fair amount about the recent California court ruling that appeared to outlaw homeschooling--because my rights, and the rights of a whole lot of people I know, were (are) on the line.

Chris writes about the rules change that was just effected by the Democratic party, intended to give a solution to the Florida/Michigan delagate-seating debacle. He points out, quite correctly, that this will make absolutely no one happy--except for those people who enjoy seeing chaos on the left side of the political aisle.

So here's a little bit of game theory that I've been mulling over since the 2000 Florida election, which has ramifications in the political world. I think we would all be a whole lot better off if we would all take this to heart:

Any time there is a close election, the determination of the winner in that election often depends on exactly what the rules of the election are, and exactly how those rules are interpreted and applied.

For example: consider an election where Candidate A, a liberal, gets 40% of the vote; Candidate B, a mainstream conservative, gets 35% of the vote; and Candidate C, a disgruntled conservative spoiler candidate, gets the other 25%. Who wins the election?

Depends on the rules. If the rules say the candidate with the most votes wins, then Candidate A is elected. But if the rules say that a candidate must have a majority of votes to win, then no one wins this round; in a two-candidate runoff, A and B will run against each other, and it's likely that B will pick up enough of C's vote to become the winner.

And the results could be totally different if the vote is tabulated by district instead of by popular vote. Suppose that all of Candidate C's vote comes from the forty-nine percent of the districts where he was on the ballot--and that he won 50% + 1 in each of these districts; then he won forty-nine percent of the districts, and is most likely the winner!

Now given all this, it should be obvious that any rule change, after the contest has begun, is a political act. Given that, in a close election, the exact reading of the rules can determine the winner, it is not possible to change the rules after an election is begun, without selecting the winner thereby. If the votes are already cast, anyone who says, "I think we should use this set of rules instead of that set," is for all intents and purposes telling you who he or she wants to win.

Because of this fact, the very integrity of the (small-d) democratic process depends on the election rules being absolutely immutable, from the moment a campaign begins until the moment the eventual victor takes the oath of office. And this is true even if there is some pre-existing, acknowledged flaw in the election rules. Any change to the rules during the process is an attempt to change the outcome of the election--or at the very least, will be interpreted as such by the supporters of one or the other of the candidates. In close elections, this is guaranteed to undermine confidence in the democratic system.

Of course, the most eminent example of this dynamic in action was the Bush v. Gore mess in Florida in 2000. At the time this was going on, I took the time to read through the Florida state election law, because I wanted to know for myself what it said. The law established a set of escalations that a candidate could use when disputing the result of an election--he could file a protest, which would grant a recount; but there was a deadline by which this had to be completed. After the count (and recount) was made, if the candidate was unhappy with the results, he could contest the entire election--but the onus was on the candidate filing the contest to prove why the previous count should be thrown out. Anyway, this entire process--as outlined in Florida electoral law--had deadlines for all these counts to be finished, and deadlines for the protests and contests to be filed. It had deadlines for the Secretary of State to certify the numbers. It had deadlines for just about everything. And so far as I could tell from watching the news, the administration of the State of Florida was trying to follow these laws as written.

But then the courts got involved. And simply by exploring the mere possibility that they might be persuaded to throw out the counting/certifying process outlined in the law and replace it with one of their own, they delegitimized whatever results would eventually be arrived at, in the eyes of one half of the population or the other. Of course, they then went ahead and did exactly that--they scrapped all those legislatively-established deadlines and processes, and established an entire new counting/certifying regime that had no basis in the law. The result was chaotic, producing recount after recount, each with different numbers. All of these recounts showed Bush in the lead, but each with a smaller margin than the previous. And all the time, everyone was thinking, "If they'd just count under this set of rules, my guy would win." The Gore supporters believed they were being robbed; the Bush supporters believed the Gore supporters were trying to rob them.

And this mess was guaranteed to hurt the credibility and legitimacy of any court unfortunate enough to have to rule on it. When the US Supreme Court finally stepped in and put a halt to it, it left a very bad taste in the mouths of half the population. Had they ruled the opposite way, it would have left a very bad taste in the mouths of the other half of the population. No matter which way they ruled, the Supreme Court would find itself diminished.

After the fact, all kinds of retroactive counts were done to see who "really" won Florida, counting under every scenario that could be imagined--manually interpreting undervotes, overvotes, hanging chads, dimpled chads, and so forth. If my memory serves me, Bush came out ahead in every scenario except one--the one in which overvotes were interpreted manually instead of rejected outright. It seems that enough people had voted Gore/Lieberman, and then voted Gore/Lieberman again as write-in candidates, that this could have put them over the top--had this not technically counted as an overvote and thus voided the ballot.

But again, this comes back to the point that started this discussion: the exact set of rules under which the election is conducted often has an effect, in close races, on the determination of the winner. If you count these overvotes (since the "intent of the voter" is clear), one side wins; if you reject them (since they are technically invalid), the other wins. After you know what the count of votes is, by that point it is not possible to argue what the rules should be without arguing who you want to win.

And the only way this mess could have been avoided, is if the State of Florida--and especially the courts therein--had allowed the process to continue exactly as written in the law, without any possibility that either side could get the process retroactively changed.


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So this brings us back to the conundrum the Democratic Party Rules Committee found itself in. The problem was that two of the states broke the rules, and moved their primaries up prior to the earliest acceptable date. The Republicans had this problem too, but they decided to solve it early on by declaring that each state that broke the rules would lose half its delegates, and they stuck by the rule. (It also helped that the Republican candidate was decided fairly early on.) The Democrats, on the other hand, made the terrible, draconian decision to eliminate all the delegates from both states.

And then, the Democratic candidates adapted their campaign strategies to these new rules. They didn't campaign in either state (not like in the other states), and Obama didn't even have his name on the ballot in Michigan. And many of the potential Democratic voters in these states, deciding that their votes would be wasted in the Democratic primaries, crossed over to vote in the Republican primaries, which at least would be selecting some delegates.

And now that the primary season is nearly done, and the Democratic candidates are running very close by most measures, the Democratic Party Rules Committee has changed the rules ostensibly to fix the problems caused by the disenfranchising of two major swing states. But in changing the rules now, they have inherently cast a vote of their own--and it's almost guaranteed to deligitimize the elections in the eyes of half the Democratic electorate.

After all, under the proportional delegate award system that the Democrats use, Obama is ahead by over a hundred delegates. But had the primaries been conducted under the same winner-take-all rules that the Republicans use in most places, Hillary would long since have been their nominee; and my understanding is that with Puerto Rico's recent primary, Hillary has actually received more popular votes so far than Obama has. So who wins? It comes down entirely to the set of rules under which the election is run. And now the Rules Committee is changing the rules! And even if they had chosen to leave the rules alone, that would have had political ramifications, as it would have had an impact on the status of the race.

Going forward, the only way to prevent this kind of problem that I can see, is for people to reject any change to any election rule as utterly illegitimate, during any election season. No change by any rules committee, legislature, or court should be countenanced, from the time before the first vote is cast (and preferably earlier), until the moment the victor takes the oath of office.

Period.

It's wrong, it's unfair, and it undermines public faith in the democratic process.


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Anyway, it's been good to see Chris back doing his thing online. Dude, when you get going, you really rock.