Nothing new today, sorry. All I did was port over my Atari Party pages from blogspot.
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Complicating the Mythos
As a parent, we try to give it straight to our four-year-old son. We explain to him about monsters and their unreality (except for gila monsters) and about dragons and their unreality (except for Komodo dragons). Of course, these exceptions prove the rule we’re trying to instill, and by prove, of course I mean it in the truest sense of the word: they test whether he can believe our assurances that the things we say don’t exist actually don’t exist.
Daddy, are guns real?
Yes.Daddy, is Star Wars real?
Star Wars the movie is real, but the events and characters depicted in the story are not real.
You get the gist of our conversations and the hair-splitting things his father does to give him the full texture of the world and the many nuanced layers of reality.
As Christmas time rolls around, he’s starting to think of Santa as part of the narrative of Christmas. Younger children don’t get it, but by 4.5, he’s understanding that there might be something behind the red clad man. So he asks, inevitably,
Daddy, is Santa real?
Well, there’s a humdinger. Santa Claus is part of the mythology of childhood, part of Christmas that makes it magickal for the young and the young at heart. Although sometime in the coming Christmases, his sophistication will demand disbelief, but he could have a couple good years of putting out cookies for Santa and the struggle to stay awake to hear Santa on the roof. I mean, for crying out loud, we even have a fireplace, so he’s not trying to suss out how Santa Claus is coming into a small apartment in the housing projects whose sole sheet metal chimney leads right into the furnace. So I don’t want to blow it already with truth and reason, do I?
Secondly, there’s the vaccination thing. You know vaccinations are about keeping a population safe as much as about keeping an individual safe, right? If I tell the urchin that Santa does not exist, he will bring it up amongst his peers in preschool and Sunday School, injecting doubt into their celebrations. He’ll be Patient Zero in the loss of innocence. They might even fight over it, or at the very least point fingers and make those “Pkooh, pkooh” gun sounds that signal ostracization before they get cliques and Facebook accounts.
So I do what any overly analytical parent steeped in English degree obfuscation and essay exam extension techniques would do.
Saint Nicholas was real, but the Santa Clauses you see today are not the real Saint Nicholas but are rather earthly manifestations of his spirit, incarnations of him.
Great, now I’ve turned the jolly old elf into a sort of Krishna of the Bhagavad Gita, except instead of manifesting a many-headed and many-armed eater of men, Santa is a many-armed, many-headed, many-mall-dwelling dispenser of giftic justice. I’ve added an additional incarnation myth to muddy the birth of Jesus and its celebration. Most importantly, I’ve started the single lie that will lead to others. Is there one current incarnation of Santa, or many? Are the reindeer incarnation of the originals, or are they the immortal reindeer whereas Santas are mortal? What is the selection and succession process like?
Fortunately, something else caught his eye about then, and he asked about litter he saw outside his window, whether God liked the litter, and why man made litter but God didn’t and whether God made the houses under construction on our route. You know, the normal torrent of consciousness a child displays where the parent scrambles to keep up and to provide a chain of evidence and reasoning for everything in the world and some things that are not.
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Man Enough
The Internet has produced another list to measure yourself upon, this time some list of 50 things every guy should know from a Web site called Guyism. As you can guess from its presence on a guy Web site, it involves essential skills dealing with beer and babes. Which is only “essential” in college, and sometimes not even then if you’re going on your own dime and have to work to put yourself through.
Still, I took my crack at the 50. They’re below in orange if I can do them, italics if I haven’t but expect I could, and stricken through if I think it’s a dumb essential skill for frat brothers.
Change a tire
Use a charcoal grill
Bong a beer
Throw a punch without looking like a sissy
Fry a turkey
Hook up the cable
Pick-up a woman with a one-liner
Get your money’s worth at a buffet
Some assembly required
Know your local professional sports teams
Pour a beer
Jump-start a car
Throw a football
Haggle for a lower price
Tie a tie
Erect a tent
Cast a fishing rod
Build a fire
Tap and operate a Keg
Use a chainsaw
Paddle a canoe/kayak
Choose a scotch/whiskey
Drive a manual car
Pick-up a girl using your dog as a wingman
Know how to navigate a road trip
Perform CPR
Iron a shirt
Shine your shoes
Do at least ten push-ups on command
Dance
Play poker
Parallel park
Unclog a toilet
Upgrade at a hotel
Rally after a big night of drinking
Spot fake breasts
Choose the right urinal
Sew a button
Unhook a bra with one hand
Open a bottle unconventionally
Talk your way out of a traffic ticket
Off-road without flipping the ATV
Buy a gift for a woman
Surf the web anonymously
Spot a liar
Drive in crappy conditions
Change a diaper
Make a drink
Shave
Make a mean breakfast
Pardon me while I get my chest thumping on here, but back when I was in college, not only could I do ten push-ups on command, but one afternoon while walking on the college mall with a girl I was trying to impress and another fellow, we were talking about push-ups or strength or something, and I dropped on the grass beside the mall and did ten one-armed push-ups with my book-laden backpack on. Back in those days, I weighed a buck twenty and had read enough Robert B. Parker to think it was a measure of a man to do one-armed push-ups, so I’d trained just for that. I don’t think the girl was impressed at all, but I was and still am.
Now, Internet Guy sites aside, what is the real measure of a man? For this, we must turn to Heinlein. From Time Enough For Love):
Change a diaper
Plan an invasion
Butcher a hog
Conn a ship
Design a building
Write a sonnet
Balance accounts
Build a wall
Set a bone
Comfort the dying
Take orders
Give orders
Cooperate
Act alone
Solve equations
Analyze a new problem
Pitch manure
Program a computer
Cook a tasty meal
Fight efficiently
Die gallantly
That, my friends, is a better list to gauge your Man Point Capacity. It doesn’t feature anything to do with drinking and easy things you can just check off. It includes things you can’t merely check off but must train for and aspire to. The difference between a boy and a man lies somewhere in that.
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In the Name of the King, Review This Meaningless Number!
The government-mandated EnergyGuide from my new dishwasher:
Note the assumptions on the bottom:
- Estimated costs based on four loads a week. Hey, we eat 3 meals a day here, cook them, and sometimes bake with them. What kind of family does four loads a week of dishes, really? Some fluffy yuppie couple in the city with a standard-sized restaurant dishwasher?
- Estimated costs are based on 2007 energy costs. Remember those halcyon days? Back before the depression?
- Estimated costs based on natural gas? Well and good for you city folk, but we’re in the country here. We pay whatever David’s boss tells him to charge us when he fills up our Liquid Propane tank.
- The standard for “standard” sized washer is not given in actual, you know, cubic feet nor anything.
This number is meaningless, but thanks to the government, IT MUST BE PRESENTED so I can better make up my mind which color suits my decor better and which one looks like its moving and grabbing parts are made of the least cheap plastic.
I wish I could blame this on a Democrat, but I know that the ruling party in Washington is the Entrenched Bureaucrat Party.
(Thanks for the link, Tam.)
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Filling In The Uh-Oh For Ace
At Ace of Spades HQ, Ace links (indirectly) to this story. The story sez:
Harvard scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute say they have for the first time partially reversed age-related degeneration in mice, resulting in new growth of the brain and testes, improved fertility, and the return of a lost cognitive function.
In a report posted online by the journal Nature in advance of print publication, researchers led by Ronald A. DePinho, a Harvard Medical School (HMS) professor of genetics, said they achieved the milestone in aging science by engineering mice with a controllable telomerase gene. The telomerase enzyme maintains the protective caps called telomeres that shield the ends of chromosomes.
As humans age, low levels of telomerase are associated with progressive erosion of telomeres, which may then contribute to tissue degeneration and functional decline in the elderly. By creating mice with a telomerase switch, the researchers were able to generate prematurely aged mice. The switch allowed the scientists to find out whether reactivating telomerase in the animals would restore telomeres and mitigate the signs and symptoms of aging. The work showed a dramatic reversal of many aspects of aging, including reversal of brain disease and infertility.
Ace uses the headline “Uh-Oh: Age-Related Disease Reversed In Mice?” and sez:
Why the “uh-oh” in the headline? I don’t know. Just seems so big, possibly, it deserves an uh-oh.
Let me fill you in on the “uh-oh” portion of the program. Why does this suck rocks?
In spite of the advances and eventual application to humans, Congress still won’t raise the Social Security eligibility age.
Because in 2028, seniors will think they’ve earned the right to live 140 years on Social Security after putting in the requisite number of quarters in their 40 of work. FDR promised!!!!
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Althouse Outs
If you buy Christmas gifts from Amazon through Ann Althouse’s blog, there is a nonzero chance she will announce your purchase and let your recipient know what he or she is getting.
We here at MfBJN respect your privacy and will not reveal anything you purchase through our sidebar. If you send us the agreed upon sum in a timely fashion, Steve. Otherwise, everyone on the Internet will learn what size stilettos you wear.
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NFL Football Has Corrupted My Son
So I gather a couple beer bottles to put them into the recycling bin, and my four-year-old son asks, “Are those Bud Lights?”
That’s what all the beer bottles are on television on Sunday afternoons, you see.
Let me be clear: NO, THEY WERE NOT.
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Two By Two, Pats For You
My Twitter feed associated with QA Hates You is chock full of geeks, and I don’t mind telling you, the recent upgrades to TSA security protocols have really caused quite a stir. Why on earth did this particular affront so capture geek imagination and indignation?
Then it hit me. To a geek steeped in the culture, this guy:
Looks a lot like these guys:
The latter, of course, are the bad guys in the television series Firefly and the film Serenity.
I wonder how much that affected the geeks.
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Dog Bites Man
Headline of the day, or at least the morning before 7am: Music business leads to a career in retail industry.
Wait, I’m being handed a late-breaking bulletin!
- Theatre business leads to career in food service industry!
- Writing business leads to career in caffeine dispensation industry!
- College degree in [strSensitiveCauseDuJour] Studies leads to career in cleaning Mom’s house, reluctantly and occasionally, in return for bunk and a couple bucks for gas!
(Yes, I realize the headline links to a story about a public relations person in the retail industry, not someone greeting people at Wal-mart. But what’s the fun in going off on a tear if you have to stick to reality?)
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Proper Attire for Safety
I’m not a hand reloader, so I’m not entirely sure about what you need to do the job safely. Which leads me to the question: do those coveralls come in men’s sizes?
Did I say coveralls? I meant coversomes.
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The Poor Victim Was Trying To Change
This poor tire started its life on the wrong path, but it came to an epiphany and was working hard to get off the drugs, get off the streets, and take responsibility for its little tires, when suddenly two men show up and hurt it.
Just another story from the gritty highways of St. Louis.
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The Choice Was Clear: Reckless vs. Feckless
Back in 2008, the choice of future foreign policies was clear: An old prisoner of war known to have a temper who joked about bombing regional superpowers for fun and who might actually have been just a little crazy and a professor.
Well, we know what we elected.
Our enemies might not have respected McCain, but they probably would have feared him a little bit. And let’s just cut the crap about multipartitism or international organization and treaties and soft power. At the very root level, the least lawabiding regimes in the world and those who would twist international cooperation to their own ends don’t care about the kabuki of the United Nations or the Hague or anything. They care about their well-being, and if the United States makes it perfectly clear that it’s not going to revoke diplomatic impunity, they’re going to do what they want regardless of international harrumphing.
Would North Korea still have shelled South Korea with McCain as president? Probably. The Chinese still played bumper cars with our electronic surveillance plane when Bush was President (albeit before he toppled a couple regimes).
But I would feel better if I didn’t suspect President Obama’s response to a dirty bomb in Topeka or a nuclear explosion in the port of Long Beach (or even a truck bomb at a holiday ceremony in small town Oregon) would be very similar to this dissembling response, albeit slightly less dissembling because he’d have his teleprompter contrast set as high as he could.
(Video seen at A Trainwreck in Maxwell.)
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He Came Bearing A Plastique Turkey
T.S.A. Chief Visits Airport to Buck Up Employees and Defend Tactics:
As John Pistole strode through Concourse B of Ronald Reagan National Airport on one of the busiest travel days of the year, flanked by airport employees, a news media handler and a reporter, a bewildered traveler looked up and wondered aloud: Is a celebrity flying through?
…
On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, he was greeted in the airport by T.S.A. employees, whom he fist-bumped and thanked for their hard work, and who beamed and thanked him back. “Thank you for standing behind us,” said the woman checking IDs. Later, two young T.S.A. officers approached him to say, “Thanks for everything you’re doing for us, dealing with all this media stuff.”
George W. Bush went to Iraq for Thanksgiving to inspire the troops and (part of) the nation. This guy goes to the Washington airport and inspires his troops. You can see the difference, can’t you?
Not if you’re the New York Times. Or in the TSA.
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I’m Such A Tease
Coming soon:
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Book Report: Fantastic Four The Universal Guide by Marvel (2007?)
Apparently, this book came along with one of the films when it was released on DVD. As such, it’s marked NOT FOR RESALE. Note that I am personally not in violation of the law here, I hope, since I merely bought this little book at some book fair or garage sale. Hopefully, I can avoid the affection of the TSA, the BATFE, and the other secretly abbreviated agencies with that disclaimer.
What is the book? It’s a little Marvel Universe lite that focuses on the Fantastic Four. It talks about the members, their enemies, the different eras in the comic books, and the different plot arcs the comics have followed. Unfortunately, since it was bundled with a DVD, it did so in a very small book with freaking tiny print and a lot of italics on a lot of colored backgrounds. That made it very hard to read in places. By “in places,” I mean “on pages.”
That said, when I squinted enough, I got a good flavor of the remembered history eras of the 1960s and early 1970s, the remembered present era of the 1970s and 1980s, and that weird future era of the 1990s and the 2000s. Of course, all references therein are to my contemporaneous reading of comic books. The wild story arcs were much more tolerable and comprehensible when you were reading them issue-by-issue. Of course, in the time I was reading comic books, a lot of the stories stretched two issues. Then they started the longer story arcs over a number of different titles, so you had to buy three or four magazines a month to keep up, and if you missed one, you were lost. And the stories got daft. For example, the Spider-Man Mark of Kane series really turned me off to the Spider-Man titles. I haven’t really read comics since.
But this book makes me think about dipping back in. I have a half long box of comic books I bought in 2007 and a small stack of comics my brother gave me at some time or another. As well as several boxes that my mom didn’t throw out.
Given that I haven’t read any of the other books I bought on September 22, 2007, maybe I will stick to real books for a while yet.
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I Was Distracted
An ESPN columnist asks:
Has anyone else noticed all the drama surrounding black quarterbacks during this NFL season?
Jason Campbell, who has been fighting for his job all season in Oakland, was benched for the second time this year against Pittsburgh on Sunday.
• Six-time Pro Bowler Donovan McNabb was replaced by Rex Grossman during the final 1:50 of a close game against the Detroit Lions earlier this month because Redskins coach Mike Shanahan claimed Grossman was better suited to run the team’s two-minute offense. Shanahan questioned McNabb’s “cardiovascular endurance.”
• And on Sunday, Titans coach Jeff Fisher demoted Vince Young to benchwarmer after Young threw a tantrum following Tennessee’s 19-16 loss to Washington. Although thumb surgery is the official reason Young’s season is over, Fisher made it clear before he knew the severity of Young’s injury that his 27-year-old quarterback was being removed as the starter.
No, sorry, I didn’t notice. I was too wrapped up in the Brett Favre/Brad Childress drama and the Little Brett/Hot Sideline Reporter drama.
Next question?
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In Real Life, She Would Have Been Arrested
Bookworm dreams about getting a pat-down from the TSA.
As they started to pat me down, I started to sing The Star-Spangled Banner. The more they patted, the louder I sang. And since this was a dream, I was singing in tune. Gradually, all airport noise around me stopped, and everyone started singing The Star-Spangled Banner with me.
In real life, that sort of thing would get you arrested. There are bombs explicitly mentioned in that song, and that’s the sort of music that the TSA cannot let stand.
See also this.
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It Can’t Miss
I’m working on a can’t-miss novel: Cowboys, Aliens, Ninjas, Pirates, Zombies, Jane Austin, and A Couple Brontes.
It’s not about having a good new idea. It’s about camping up what’s come before.
Do you think I need a comic book character in it?
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Continuing the Failed Policies of President Bush
Today, the White House announced that President Obama publicly pardoned the Thanksgiving turkey.
And then had him secretly rendered to Romania, where it will be held and interrogated until it gobbles.
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Book Report: Missouri Trivia by Ernie Couch (1992)
This book is a collection of questions and answers loosely grouped into categories where the questions are about people, places, and things in the state of Missouri. I browsed it during a couple of football games and in advance of our recent trivia night triumph. The book didn’t help in that regard, however, as there were no Missouri-centric questions at the trivia night.
Unfortunately, the format of the book as questions and answers grouped loosely at the chapter level means this book is better for, say, quizzing someone during a long drive rather than reading it straight through to pick up knowledge about the state of Missouri. I might retain a couple of nuggets, but the loose grouping and the format make for poor retention. For retention, organization by title, region, or something might have helped.
Although for the sheer quizzing of a companion, some of the answers are going to be marvelously trivial. What was the corn production in 1870? I don’t remember if that actual question is in there, but there are some looking for particularly specific numbers that you’d get from an old almanac and nowhere else.
Oh, and the final little asterisk? The answer given in this book to the question Who won the 1981 World Series? is The St. Louis Cardinals. So any answer you don’t know for sure is suspect anyway. Maybe it’s better if you not retain them.
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