I'm taking a few days off... I'm starting to move into a code orange situation, so I thought it would be a good idea to take some time off so I don't start stripping my mental gears. And with the nexus of Canada Day and the 4th, well, it seems like the ideal time to do so.
I'll still be around, and I'll be getting my ducks in a row on a few things I've wanted to work on for Culture Kills, so I have a feeling that when I return, I'll be refreshed and ready to go, because there are times when I just need to spend a day or so decompressing so the ideas start flowing again.
Be back for Grand Theft Auto Day.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Sunday Night Video: The Bob Ross of Spray Paint
I honestly kept expecting this guy to talk about happy little trees... err, stars rather.
And like the late Bob Ross, he makes it look like you could do the same thing, even though I know that there is no way in hell I could approach that kind of proficiency with a couple of cans of spray paint, a few pieces of newspaper and a plate.
And like the late Bob Ross, he makes it look like you could do the same thing, even though I know that there is no way in hell I could approach that kind of proficiency with a couple of cans of spray paint, a few pieces of newspaper and a plate.
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Saturday, June 28, 2008
Font appreciation
Thanks to a pointer from the New York Times, here is a fun kids activity: font appreciation. Using new on-line (and free) software from FontStruct, anyone can try and make their own fonts. My 7 year old son took a break from his continual Spore creations (over 100 now) to design a font. His creation is here and is named as an amusing play on words from a Disney character and a more standard font. It is, to use his words, "not good" but it was a solid artistic activity nonetheless.
Measure of world wealth
Total number of Lego bricks in existence per head of population = 62
Total (estimated) number of Lego bricks in existence per head in Gans household = 10,000
I guess we are well into the top end of the world distribution of Lego. For so much more, read here.
Total (estimated) number of Lego bricks in existence per head in Gans household = 10,000
I guess we are well into the top end of the world distribution of Lego. For so much more, read here.
Notes from the war
Recently people have asked me: "you write so much about your two eldest kids but Child No.3 rarely rates a mention? Is she a neglected third child?" Well, the answer is a definite "no," especially in terms of parenting attention and angst. When it comes down to it, this blog is a censored version of my parenting life. It is not and I do not claim it to be a full record. And when it comes to Child No.3, who is soon to turn 4, the terrible twos have seemed to lasted well beyond what one would have hoped. And in recent times, with a ton of work and other family issues going on: her tantrums became more frequent and harder to deal with. Without a resolution, I simply couldn't bring myself to write about it here.
You can take it from the fact that I am doing so now that, indeed, we think we are out of it now (hopefully). That is just as well. Another parent remarked when I was about to ask Child No.3 to do something she clearly didn't want to, "well, let's see how Professor Parentonomics handles this one." Fortunately, I did and helped the 'brand.'
But only a few short weeks ago, the best way of describing our relationship with Child No.3 was 'war.' Wars with young children are things that can grow slowly and escalate. When we realised where we were a couple of months ago, it was clear that we were dealing with greater and stronger tantrums than we wanted or had dealt with for the other children. But the cause was not at all clear. Child No.3 was going to pre-School now. That is more intense and she was not having her afternoon nap (the School wants this, but she doesn't need it at their scheduled time). So we just wasn't sure if she was just tired. We all throw tantrums when we are tired. And actually we were tired too and so we didn't enforce punishments to control tantrums with the same forced as we used to.
There is, however, another thing about Child No.3 that is relevant. Regular readers know of the strategic prowess of Child No.1. But Child No.1 is not our most strategic child. That honor easily rests with her younger sister. Child No.1 is easy to write about because she uses strategy to get what she wants and is calculating in understanding the incentives before her. And because what she wants is so transparent, it is easy to set things in place. You just have to program her the right way. What is more, she is upfront about her strategy, you know, much like an evil genius who just can't help explaining their evil plan to you. (By the way, if you want to read a good novel about that one, try this).
Child No.3 is very different. First of all, she is not transparent. When she wins, she knows it, but is savvy enough to keep it to herself. But you can see it in her movements. For instance, occasionally when we are running short of time I say, "look don't take you plates to the sink, just run upstairs and get undressed for bathtime." In response to this, Child No.1 would sing all the way, "I just gottaway with mur---DA, I just gottaway with mur---DA!" In contrast, Child No.3 would just go upstairs. No reaction but there is a small smirk on her face and a slight spring in her step. One suspects that on the inside, she is happier than any other child in this situation.
Which brings me to a second difference: this is all game to her. Child No.1 cares mostly about things (food and money) and fairness (no one gets more than her). Child No.3 like to win and she especially likes to win against her parents. Not having to do something is victory. That makes outcomes a zero-sum situation and Child No.3 is a master at picking her battles at a time of her opponent's greatest weakness.
Hence, the tantrums. Now you might think, what good would a tantrum do? Wouldn't you just punish them, be done with it and teach her that she can't win that way? That's the theory but implementation can have some issues. Let me tell you, with Child No.3, her strategic insight meant that a credible threat of a punishment and a clear demonstration that she had no choice but to comply did wonders. When she was 1 year old, we had a great party trick. Child No.3 would start crying and we would then tell her to stop including an authoritative finger. She would then cough and stop! Other parents would watch in awe. In reality, she had just been pre-programmed.
But with age, her ability to draw power from the dark side became stronger. The chief method of tantrum punishment in our household was the tried and true, 'time out' or 'corner' as we called it. Throw a tantrum and that is where you will find yourself. But with three children and lots of stuff going on, the threat became, "I will count to three and if you don't stop, you will be put in the corner." We just couldn't impose punishment immediately and so needed a remotely instrumented escape clause.
Child No.3 tapped into this. She became an expert at stopping just before we got to 3. That would have been fine but she learned the entire situation. She became an expert at stopping just before we had completely had enough and would actually physically put her in the corner. Resistence to doing what she was told and the resulting tantrum could last many minutes and finally when I was able to credibly go and punish her, she would stop. I'd think, damm, she got me again. Having stopped or complied, she would be off the hook. The problem is that her tantrums had become longer and more frequent and using this strategy she was sometimes getting away with "murrrrrDA." I was not happy and very frustrated and it was affecting my relationship with her.
It was with upon that realisation that the notion that we were at war came to the fore. The question was how to win it. Withdrawl wasn't an option but the insurgency was targetted, continuous and relentless. It was clearly aimed at a long-term breakdown in rules and a transfer of power. And it wasn't the sort of thing that having a talk about it was going to work -- we tried diplomacy but a 3 year old with dimples can see right through that. 'Talking' made us feel like we were parenting but, in fact, the war continued.
And it was hard to explain all this beyond our family. Child No.3 is a consumate extravert (a trait she inherited from her mother not me). She will target and charm any adult entering her domain. She is all "pleases" and "thank yous" because she knows that works. Other people we explained all this to her would look at her perplexed: "This is your monster?" I would counter, "You haven't seen her angry. You do not want to see her angry."
What we needed to do was shake things up and try and get ourselves onto a more sustainable path. It was with that thought that a few weekends ago, we committed ourselves to a policy that can quite accurately be called 'The Surge.' The idea was simple. We would punish immediately and with no warnings or opportunity for negotiation. And we would do it for the entire weekend without exception and without regard to cost.
And we did so do it and it was as awful an experience as you can imagine. Even though we had told her it was coming, when it did, she was, not surprisingly, shocked. She would find herself immediately in the corner. And she was not at all happy. The tantrum would, of course, get worse and by worse I mean loud. It would also become animated with "I didn't do that! You didn't count!" During this moment, I listened to the older two children debate the ethics of all of this:
Child No.2: "She's right, he didn't count. She just doesn't understand."And with that Child No.1 switched off her hearing aid (making us all envious of that option) and got on with her business.
Child No.1: "Well, she knew she shouldn't be throwing tantrums, didn't she? Dad just wants her to stop."
Child No.2: "But she is very upset and it doesn't look like it's working. She is really loud. This is really annoying. Maybe we should help?"
Child No.1: "True it is annoying. I wouldn't get involved if I were you. You might be the target of more punishment yourself. Just be extra well-behaved."
That wasn't the end of the matter. Child No.3 decided to resist. She would escape the corner and fight, usually with me, for her freedom. And Child No.3 is really strong. Much stronger than your average 3 year old. So it was really tough to contain her.
Now it is perhaps best here to pause the story and note that much of what we were doing with The Surge was not the best 'time out' practice. I was somewhat aware of this at the time but this Slate article today pretty much demonstrates that that was the case. Using its criteria (and I recommend you read that article if you engage in time-out punishments), I have evaluated my own performance here.
As you can see, it is far from a perfect score and the Surge didn't not necessarily involve an improvement on all dimensions.
We were well aware that a Surge wouldn't actually solve anything unless we could withdrawl from it at a more peaceful outcome than before. So right from the start we had plan. If the Surge started reducing tantrums we would need to replace it with something else. Indeed, as the Slate article points out, you need something other than a time-out to use to manage the intensity of punishments. For Child No.3, the neglected third child aspect was that she had very little of her own. All of her toys were pretty much shared. She got little in the way of activities. And in our austere household, there were hardly any special treats or TV. You need to give in order to be able to withdraw.
But more critically, Child No.3 needed to feel she was 'winning.' So we enacted a chart system that hadn't worked for other two but might just work for her. We decided to give her a 'star' for each day she did not throw a tantrum. Make it through a week and she would 'win' a reward -- in our case, a toy of her own. So now if she was on the very of a tantrum, we could say, "do it and you will miss out on today's star." It required no immediate action on our part and so Child No.3 knew it was credible. Prior to the Surge, the tantrums and been so fierce, frequent and emotional that we couldn't have explained or transitioned fairly to this system. Afterwards, we could and did.
And it came with bonuses. For instance, at the same time, she developed a sore on her fingers that she sucked. We knew we would have to deal with this at some stage but the sore gave us the opportunity we needed to get her on-board. We used the chart to track behaviour and now she is 'finger sucking free.'
The war has ended but it took its toll. Our physical battles during the Surge left me with a crippling back injury that I am still recovering from. But the price was worth it. Indeed, there was some irony in the outcome. When I was having trouble getting my socks and shoes on to go to work, Child No.3 noticed and said, "Daddy, I can do that. I can help. I put my shoes and socks on without being told now." And with that she put my socks and shoes on. It was many years earlier than I expected to have this role reversal. I know that our battles are really not over, but it was a fitting reminder of a restored relationship.
Some previous posts on punishment are here, here and here.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Week 7: Pageant of the Transmundane
Hello from Denver, Colorado. I went looking for the road to South Park, but all I ran into was a creature with Patrick Duffy for a leg and a talking towel. Strange days are these.
Anyway, the winner this week hails from a haven of pop cultural goodness: Kung Fu Rodeo (I think I would camp out to see an event call that if it came to my town, no word of it a lie).
This week's winning entry is atypical of what I usually hand out this hardware to, as it is a) a video that is only 15 seconds long b) it is entirely in Japanese, a language I can't speak or understand and c) features Steven Seagal, who I think is a pompous tool.
However, this ad for a Seagal box set almost makes me want to forgive the current king of direct-to-DVD action... almost. It is that close. However, I have been doing that a cappella theme music all week.
And with this one, well, I could have gone with The Simpsons in Japan, but I thought, nah, let's emphasize something different here. Like the fact that Steven Seagal is a Buddhist, and Homer is a fat, oily man. So Homer as Buddha seemed like the right call here. Thus another Homer Simpson Transmundanity Award is born.
Congrats go out to AF Duncan and Kung Fu Rodeo. Here is your collective badge.
The rules of this little contest: Every week I will be selecting one blog post that I have seen from the vast reaches of the blogosphere to bestow with the Homer Simpson Transmundanity Award for being one of the freakiest(in a funny way) things I've seen or read during a 7 day period. It doesn't necessarily have to have been written during the week, I just had to have encountered it. That means that if you find something interesting and repost it like a movie or whatever, if I saw it at your blog first, you get the prize. Of course, creating your own content is also a very good way to win.
Now, if you see a post that you think is worthy of this illustrious prize, just drop me a line at campybeaver@gmail.com and we'll see if we can't get your suggestion up and award-ready while giving you some credit and a link to your own blog.
Anyway, the winner this week hails from a haven of pop cultural goodness: Kung Fu Rodeo (I think I would camp out to see an event call that if it came to my town, no word of it a lie).
This week's winning entry is atypical of what I usually hand out this hardware to, as it is a) a video that is only 15 seconds long b) it is entirely in Japanese, a language I can't speak or understand and c) features Steven Seagal, who I think is a pompous tool.
However, this ad for a Seagal box set almost makes me want to forgive the current king of direct-to-DVD action... almost. It is that close. However, I have been doing that a cappella theme music all week.
And with this one, well, I could have gone with The Simpsons in Japan, but I thought, nah, let's emphasize something different here. Like the fact that Steven Seagal is a Buddhist, and Homer is a fat, oily man. So Homer as Buddha seemed like the right call here. Thus another Homer Simpson Transmundanity Award is born.
Congrats go out to AF Duncan and Kung Fu Rodeo. Here is your collective badge.
The rules of this little contest: Every week I will be selecting one blog post that I have seen from the vast reaches of the blogosphere to bestow with the Homer Simpson Transmundanity Award for being one of the freakiest(in a funny way) things I've seen or read during a 7 day period. It doesn't necessarily have to have been written during the week, I just had to have encountered it. That means that if you find something interesting and repost it like a movie or whatever, if I saw it at your blog first, you get the prize. Of course, creating your own content is also a very good way to win.
Now, if you see a post that you think is worthy of this illustrious prize, just drop me a line at campybeaver@gmail.com and we'll see if we can't get your suggestion up and award-ready while giving you some credit and a link to your own blog.
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OAuth Available for Google Data APIs
We love open standards, and we've just added support for a new one: OAuth is now supported on all of the Google Data APIs.
OAuth is an open standard for authentication that allows applications to authenticate users without ever directly handling usernames and passwords. Because OAuth is a standard, you can use the same authentication code for any of the Google Data APIs and for APIs from other providers who support OAuth.
To learn more, see the announcement on the Google Data APIs blog.
Express Checkout: Mini-Me, Miley, The Hoff and Carlin
- Does anyone want to see a sex tape featuring Verne "Mini Me" Troyer? I certainly don't. Granted, I don't want to see his recent work outside of pornography either, and apparently no one else wants to either given The Love Guru's box office take.
- Overexposed (in more ways than one) teen sensation Miley Cyrus is reportedly in talks with Tyra Banks to start her own teen talk show. You know, if it was Oprah producing the show, then maybe it would have a shot, but Tyra Banks? Somehow I don't see it being a success.
- The producers of Saturday Night Live are rebroadcasting the first episode of the show from 1975 to honor George Carlin. I heartily approve.
- David Hasselhoff has claimed that because the producers of the revamped Knight Rider minimized his input on the series and went in a direction that didn't feature him, the show is destined to fail. However, the way I see it, yes, the show will fail, but it will be despite distancing themselves from Hasselhoff, who, let's face it, is the punchline to a joke now and someone who is hard to take seriously. No, the reason the show will fail is NBC is still going to be in a bad place next season, and the fact that it is taking on Bones and The New Adventures of Old Christine doesn't help. So The Hoff shouldn't feel vindicated when this happens.
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Buy Parentonomics Right Now
I have, in my hands, the very first printed copy of Parentonomics. My kids are currently doing the MS Readathon (indeed, Child No.1 read books for it while manning her other charity store). So I have decided to help them out by placing that first printed copy for sale on eBay. Click here to see the listing and bid if you want to.
The book will be available in Australia in 6 weeks and elsewhere in the world in 2009. I will ship a personally signed copy to the auction winner. Shipping to anywhere in the world is free. Moreover, all proceeds will go to the MS Society and I will personally match the winning bid with a donation.
So this is a great opportunity to help out a good cause and maybe get some kudos from getting to read the book first up. My mother hasn't even read it!
In celebration of this, let me link to two older posts. First, here is a great 30 year old story about one child's view of the MS Readathon. Second, here is what happened when my children had their first eBay experience.
The book will be available in Australia in 6 weeks and elsewhere in the world in 2009. I will ship a personally signed copy to the auction winner. Shipping to anywhere in the world is free. Moreover, all proceeds will go to the MS Society and I will personally match the winning bid with a donation.
So this is a great opportunity to help out a good cause and maybe get some kudos from getting to read the book first up. My mother hasn't even read it!
In celebration of this, let me link to two older posts. First, here is a great 30 year old story about one child's view of the MS Readathon. Second, here is what happened when my children had their first eBay experience.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
A Google Data API for Google Finance
In case you haven't seen the announcement on the Google Data API blog, there is a new API available for Google Finance Portfolios.
The Google Finance API makes it easy to create and access investment data for your users -- ranging from updating their investment holdings and watchlists to retrieving current portfolio value and performance. With your applications, users can monitor their portfolios and transactions and keep positions up-to-date and in-sync. If you have a great idea for a portfolio application, give the new API a try!
The Sopranos Box Set: Worth the money?
I read a recent announcement about the release of a Sopranos Box Set, which will feature 30 discs, will retail for about 400 dollars and will weigh about 10 pounds, and it got me to thinking about how much other things cost by the pound, and I thought I would share my observations with you in the form of a list going from the least expensive to the most expensive. In no way is this list exhaustive, however, there were some interesting things that popped up as I put this together.
Since the boxset will cost roughly 400 dollars, and weighs about 10 pounds, let's just round that off to an even 40 dollars a pound.
Let's compare the price of the Sopranos box set by pound to other commodities:
Note: Some of these figures may be off due to the age of some of the sources, so if something looks really wrong, that would be the reason.
Tap Water: approaching $0.00
Steel: ~$0.55
Gasoline (at $4 a gallon and 6lb/gallon): $0.67
Turkey(2005): $0.81
Crude Oil: $0.97
American Pennies: $1.82
Budweiser: $2.27
Ground Beef: $2.50
Maxwell House coffee: ~$4
American Nickels: $4.54
Stephen King's The Stand (Modern Classics Edition): $4.54
2008 Kia Spectra: $5.02
Twix Bars: $7.97
Dunkin Donuts Original Blend coffee: ~$8
Boneless Rib-eye Steak: $8.92
2008 Toyota Prius: $10.02
Smoked Salmon: $18
American Dimes: $20.02
American Quarters: $20.02
Helium: $23.61
Freon: ~$28
Mercury: $31
Sopranos Box Set: $40
Omaha Steaks Bacon-wrapped Filets: $40.44
Uranium: $57
Truffles: $60 to start
2008 Ferrari 599 GTB: $81.30
Kopi Luwak coffee beans: $160
Human Blood(based on US Processing Fee): $171.53
Silver(16 oz pound): $275.84
Kobe Beef: $300
US 1 dollar bills: $454
A Boeing 747-400: $602
Ink Jet printer Ink: ~$700
Saffron: $800
Gold(16 oz pound): $14640
Platinum: $32848
So, do you think The Sopranos is worth how much HBO is selling it for per pound? I guess that is a question you will have to answer for yourself.
Since the boxset will cost roughly 400 dollars, and weighs about 10 pounds, let's just round that off to an even 40 dollars a pound.
Let's compare the price of the Sopranos box set by pound to other commodities:
Note: Some of these figures may be off due to the age of some of the sources, so if something looks really wrong, that would be the reason.
Tap Water: approaching $0.00
Steel: ~$0.55
Gasoline (at $4 a gallon and 6lb/gallon): $0.67
Turkey(2005): $0.81
Crude Oil: $0.97
American Pennies: $1.82
Budweiser: $2.27
Ground Beef: $2.50
Maxwell House coffee: ~$4
American Nickels: $4.54
Stephen King's The Stand (Modern Classics Edition): $4.54
2008 Kia Spectra: $5.02
Twix Bars: $7.97
Dunkin Donuts Original Blend coffee: ~$8
Boneless Rib-eye Steak: $8.92
2008 Toyota Prius: $10.02
Smoked Salmon: $18
American Dimes: $20.02
American Quarters: $20.02
Helium: $23.61
Freon: ~$28
Mercury: $31
Sopranos Box Set: $40
Omaha Steaks Bacon-wrapped Filets: $40.44
Uranium: $57
Truffles: $60 to start
2008 Ferrari 599 GTB: $81.30
Kopi Luwak coffee beans: $160
Human Blood(based on US Processing Fee): $171.53
Silver(16 oz pound): $275.84
Kobe Beef: $300
US 1 dollar bills: $454
A Boeing 747-400: $602
Ink Jet printer Ink: ~$700
Saffron: $800
Gold(16 oz pound): $14640
Platinum: $32848
So, do you think The Sopranos is worth how much HBO is selling it for per pound? I guess that is a question you will have to answer for yourself.
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Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Will Ferrell: The World's Angriest Boss
Yes, it is an Saturday Night Live sketch, but it is still funny (and Pierce Brosnan plays his role perfectly).
Thank you Funny or Die for this crispy old timey clip.
Thank you Funny or Die for this crispy old timey clip.
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24 is going to be 22 episodes this season
Well, talk about taking some of the wind out of a premise. The producers of 24 have announced that there will only be 22 new episodes of the show for the January 2009 season.
Now, I've watched this series from the beginning, and I have to tell you, this is some grade A bullshit.
You see, there is a 2 hour prequel movie that is going to premiere in November, which is non-contiguous with the rest of the season. But that was supposed to be a bonus for fans because the entire 2008 season was postponed, but now, that is no longer the case.
I mean, come on, the entire premise of the series is that the events of a given series take place over a complete day in 24 one hour segments. I mean, that's why it is obviously called 24. It is an easy concept to follow.
I know it is an expensive show to film, but you've had an extra year to prepare for it, and if they are using those same preexisting episodes this season, it makes this whole thing even harder to fathom. Seriously. What the hell are you guys doing over there?
The loyal fans of this series, like me, sat through season 6, and for the most part, we held our tongues about that trainwreck. I kept expecting to see a cougar pop up at the oddest places... it was just that bad.
And when the writer's strike happened, well, we were disappointed that the series was put on hiatus for a year, but we understood the motives behind that move. But now, somehow the writers and producers can't come up with material for 2 episodes?
What were they going to do before the strike? They must have some idea of what was going to happen in hours 23 and 24, and it most likely had to do with Jack Bauer killing someone and thus, ending the grand threat. It isn't that hard people.
Part of me thinks that a more appropriate title for this entry is: "24 Producers/writers drop trousers and urinate on fans while waving their extended middle fingers just for the hell of it," but I don't think that, while it is accurate, it would fit easily in anyone's feed reader or even the title part of the Blogger template.
I have a feeling that more than a few fans, after the season six fiasco (and I just had a Freudian slip while typing that, as I somehow kept hitting "u" instead of "i" in the word six) and now this, well, they may be off the show for good.
Now, I've watched this series from the beginning, and I have to tell you, this is some grade A bullshit.
You see, there is a 2 hour prequel movie that is going to premiere in November, which is non-contiguous with the rest of the season. But that was supposed to be a bonus for fans because the entire 2008 season was postponed, but now, that is no longer the case.
I mean, come on, the entire premise of the series is that the events of a given series take place over a complete day in 24 one hour segments. I mean, that's why it is obviously called 24. It is an easy concept to follow.
I know it is an expensive show to film, but you've had an extra year to prepare for it, and if they are using those same preexisting episodes this season, it makes this whole thing even harder to fathom. Seriously. What the hell are you guys doing over there?
The loyal fans of this series, like me, sat through season 6, and for the most part, we held our tongues about that trainwreck. I kept expecting to see a cougar pop up at the oddest places... it was just that bad.
And when the writer's strike happened, well, we were disappointed that the series was put on hiatus for a year, but we understood the motives behind that move. But now, somehow the writers and producers can't come up with material for 2 episodes?
What were they going to do before the strike? They must have some idea of what was going to happen in hours 23 and 24, and it most likely had to do with Jack Bauer killing someone and thus, ending the grand threat. It isn't that hard people.
Part of me thinks that a more appropriate title for this entry is: "24 Producers/writers drop trousers and urinate on fans while waving their extended middle fingers just for the hell of it," but I don't think that, while it is accurate, it would fit easily in anyone's feed reader or even the title part of the Blogger template.
I have a feeling that more than a few fans, after the season six fiasco (and I just had a Freudian slip while typing that, as I somehow kept hitting "u" instead of "i" in the word six) and now this, well, they may be off the show for good.
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Tuesday, June 24, 2008
The fine line on motivation
So it was a recent Saturday night and the following conversation took place with Child No.1:
Let's face it, this isn't the most common of 9 year old problems but, as I guess so many who read this blog already know, I don't have a common 9 year old. Not only is she the epitome of the 'rational agent' in economics with clearly defined motives (food and money) and a dramatic responsiveness to incentives, she is also somewhat driven. When it comes to assigned tasks, she does them and she does them until they are done.
But it goes deeper than that. In terms of school-led authority -- in contrast, to parent-led authority -- she obeys with a literal meaning. School and teacher rules are rules meant to be followed. Not just in spirit but to the letter.
Let me give you an example. Last year, her mother was waiting for 15 minutes after the end of school for my daughter to emerge from class. All the other children had come out but she was nowhere to be seen. Eventually, she went inside. My daughter was standing dutifully behind her desk. All of the chairs in the classroom were neatly staked on the desks (as they do for nighttime cleaning). There were no other children there and there was no teacher.
Herein lies our current issue and that of her teacher. Child No.1 will do as she is told at school but will do it with robot-like intensity. That creates all manner of issues. For instance, this weekend she spent hours, colouring in her 'Yearbook.' Our daughter is driven but slow at tasks and so is behind in that one. She was still doing April. As I watched what she was doing I asked why she had to fill each page so completely with designs, words and colours. The reason: "our teacher says not to leave any white bits." I argued that that seemed ridiculous. "No he actually said that to the class." I then, trying to get her to question authority more, gave her a lecture about judgment and thoughtfulness on whether a task is worth doing. That would come back to bite me very quickly.
Today we did one of our rare things and inquired about this and some other rules laid down that I had put in the ridiculous category. Her teacher explained that most kids (you know, the rest of them) needed to put just a bit more effort into the Yearbooks and so he had asked the class to fill in as much as possible. But what my daughter heard was: "he doesn't like white spaces so I had better fill it all in." And it is not like she just fills for its own sake. Given other pronouncements, each bit is an intricate design without a hint of the initial page colour. Well no wonder it takes so much time. The problem was he was trying to move the mass but in the process sent my daughter to extremes.
Together her teacher and ourselves all agree she needs to do less, use judgment and prioritise more. Interestingly, many years ago, my own parents had heard complaints from a teacher of someone, who will remain nameless (but isn't my brother), that their son should really stop on the school project after Volume 2! The project did, in fact, end up in three volumes. So there is some familiarity with this problem in our family. But a good work ethic is not something we want to extinguish (it could prove quite useful in a few years). Nonetheless, that concern aside we discussed action plans to get the workload down.
One issue, of course, is that prioritisation is not a trait that I possess. As my spouse puts it, "you do everything so damn quickly you never need to worry about it." So I guess lessons in such techniques will not come from me and my "just do it" attitude.
That said, incentives can balance the situation. Saying to my daughter, get this finished in the next half hour or there is no dinner works. But it is a delicate balancing act. Get the set of prices slightly wrong and we can have an extreme response.
And there is one final piece to the puzzle. I didn't talk to the teacher today, Child No.1's mother did. She had to listen to a rant as to it being very unhelpful when a parent (I wonder who) says a particular practice is "ridiculous" when he is just trying to get some balance in the children's work habits. I guess I have to agree with that one but I did actually have a more nuanced approach that talked about what was happening at home rather than school. For school, you do what the teacher says.
Anyhow, I wondered: how did he find out about my particular opinions? Fortunately, it wasn't the case that Child No.1 had simply volunteered this information. Remember she is strategic so she knows that there is value in withholding certain things. But when asked by her teacher why her parents wanted to talk, she spilled the beans.
But that is part of the issue. Child No.1 knows that information is valuable for strategic reasons. The problem is that she is far from socially sophisticated enough to know which information should be withheld for which adult -- teacher or parents. And so she makes judgments that results in a very distorted flow of communication between ourselves and her teacher. Another difficult management issue for us.
This, however, I suspect is not an issue her mother faces. I wasn't part of the conversation but I'm pretty darn sure that all of the blame for communication difficulties and the genetic pre-dispositions of Child No.1 have been firmly laid in my lap! When I finally front up for her official parent-teacher interview next month, things could get a tad interesting.
"Come on. Would you like to watch some TV?"Ahh, I thought to myself. A chip off the old block. My daughter at home on a Saturday night working on a school project. A colleague listening in on this conversation in disbelief (and knowing my own history on this) exclaimed: "what is wrong with you people??? Are you all crazy?"
"Are you kidding? I have work to do."
"But perhaps a rest is in order ..."
"Look if I don't get this homework done now I will only have to do it tomorrow. Be real!"
Let's face it, this isn't the most common of 9 year old problems but, as I guess so many who read this blog already know, I don't have a common 9 year old. Not only is she the epitome of the 'rational agent' in economics with clearly defined motives (food and money) and a dramatic responsiveness to incentives, she is also somewhat driven. When it comes to assigned tasks, she does them and she does them until they are done.
But it goes deeper than that. In terms of school-led authority -- in contrast, to parent-led authority -- she obeys with a literal meaning. School and teacher rules are rules meant to be followed. Not just in spirit but to the letter.
Let me give you an example. Last year, her mother was waiting for 15 minutes after the end of school for my daughter to emerge from class. All the other children had come out but she was nowhere to be seen. Eventually, she went inside. My daughter was standing dutifully behind her desk. All of the chairs in the classroom were neatly staked on the desks (as they do for nighttime cleaning). There were no other children there and there was no teacher.
"Why didn't you come out?"Now one can be comforted that our child will obey the rules but there is also something sad and deeply worrying about this episode. "If the teacher had said jump off a cliff would you do it?" You actually want your child to be more flexible than that. Although she wasn't in danger at some point you'd hope that she would realise something was amiss and rules could be broken. I guess she wasn't hungry yet.
"We weren't dismissed."
"What do you mean? All of the other children have gone."
"But our teacher didn't have us for the last session and we had to come back from art. So we came back and no one was here. The rest left. But since we hadn't been dismissed I figured we had to stay."
"But wasn't the fact that all these chairs were up giving you some sort of clue?"
"Oh no. When we came back they weren't up. Everyone else left without doing it. So I put them up and waited."
Herein lies our current issue and that of her teacher. Child No.1 will do as she is told at school but will do it with robot-like intensity. That creates all manner of issues. For instance, this weekend she spent hours, colouring in her 'Yearbook.' Our daughter is driven but slow at tasks and so is behind in that one. She was still doing April. As I watched what she was doing I asked why she had to fill each page so completely with designs, words and colours. The reason: "our teacher says not to leave any white bits." I argued that that seemed ridiculous. "No he actually said that to the class." I then, trying to get her to question authority more, gave her a lecture about judgment and thoughtfulness on whether a task is worth doing. That would come back to bite me very quickly.
Today we did one of our rare things and inquired about this and some other rules laid down that I had put in the ridiculous category. Her teacher explained that most kids (you know, the rest of them) needed to put just a bit more effort into the Yearbooks and so he had asked the class to fill in as much as possible. But what my daughter heard was: "he doesn't like white spaces so I had better fill it all in." And it is not like she just fills for its own sake. Given other pronouncements, each bit is an intricate design without a hint of the initial page colour. Well no wonder it takes so much time. The problem was he was trying to move the mass but in the process sent my daughter to extremes.
Together her teacher and ourselves all agree she needs to do less, use judgment and prioritise more. Interestingly, many years ago, my own parents had heard complaints from a teacher of someone, who will remain nameless (but isn't my brother), that their son should really stop on the school project after Volume 2! The project did, in fact, end up in three volumes. So there is some familiarity with this problem in our family. But a good work ethic is not something we want to extinguish (it could prove quite useful in a few years). Nonetheless, that concern aside we discussed action plans to get the workload down.
One issue, of course, is that prioritisation is not a trait that I possess. As my spouse puts it, "you do everything so damn quickly you never need to worry about it." So I guess lessons in such techniques will not come from me and my "just do it" attitude.
That said, incentives can balance the situation. Saying to my daughter, get this finished in the next half hour or there is no dinner works. But it is a delicate balancing act. Get the set of prices slightly wrong and we can have an extreme response.
And there is one final piece to the puzzle. I didn't talk to the teacher today, Child No.1's mother did. She had to listen to a rant as to it being very unhelpful when a parent (I wonder who) says a particular practice is "ridiculous" when he is just trying to get some balance in the children's work habits. I guess I have to agree with that one but I did actually have a more nuanced approach that talked about what was happening at home rather than school. For school, you do what the teacher says.
Anyhow, I wondered: how did he find out about my particular opinions? Fortunately, it wasn't the case that Child No.1 had simply volunteered this information. Remember she is strategic so she knows that there is value in withholding certain things. But when asked by her teacher why her parents wanted to talk, she spilled the beans.
But that is part of the issue. Child No.1 knows that information is valuable for strategic reasons. The problem is that she is far from socially sophisticated enough to know which information should be withheld for which adult -- teacher or parents. And so she makes judgments that results in a very distorted flow of communication between ourselves and her teacher. Another difficult management issue for us.
This, however, I suspect is not an issue her mother faces. I wasn't part of the conversation but I'm pretty darn sure that all of the blame for communication difficulties and the genetic pre-dispositions of Child No.1 have been firmly laid in my lap! When I finally front up for her official parent-teacher interview next month, things could get a tad interesting.
Levitt on car seats
I have written before about Steve Levitt's research on car seats and whether we need them. See here and here. Below is his TED talk outlining that research. In terms of cost, I don't think it is worth throwing away a car seat you might have. But what this research is suggesting is that unless you are rigorous in making sure your child is put in exactly correctly when you drive, you might actually be putting them at more risk with a car seat than with a lap belt. Indeed, the lap belt with integrated booster may be the best solution overall as it maps real world behaviour and outcomes with design. And no one has looked at the impact of having a car seat on an older child sitting right next to them during a crash. Don't we owe it to our kids to find out much more about this before imposing standards and thinking that we are done.
How early can you voluntarily trade?
Daniel Hamermesh asks whether a two year old can really grasp the free market. My inclination is to say, 'yes,' but perhaps not in the way he might be thinking. The issue is strategies 2 year old's employ when it comes to disputes over property rights. This usually involves a toy that is scarce relative to demand.
I watched the behaviour of all three of my children in child care over this issue. Child No.1's strategy was this. When she had a toy if anyone who had a prior reputation for expressing a wish to relieve her of it would come near, she would scream her head off. The would be predator would be driven away but, suffice to say, some loss in trade efficiency would occur.
Child No.2, on the other hand, avoided conflict. At a very young age, he worked out that it was worthwhile just giving the other child the toy. He knew that within minutes it would be disguarded and he could retrieve it. I used to watch this in amazement. Literally, as soon as the toy was abandoned, he would swoop in and regather it. It was a model of conflict avoidance and in many respects a perfectly acceptable matching of needs and wants.
But Child No.3 has trade down. With two others in the household to contend with, when someone else expressed a desire for a toy, she would be reasoned with and accept a deal to exchange that toy, if only for a time, in return for something -- usually the offer of another activity or some attention. But she would only do it voluntarily with some upside to the deal for her.
The upshot of this is that I think that voluntary exchange and observed equilibrium behaviour amongst two year olds is an experiential thing. Hmm, just the same as for everyone else.
I watched the behaviour of all three of my children in child care over this issue. Child No.1's strategy was this. When she had a toy if anyone who had a prior reputation for expressing a wish to relieve her of it would come near, she would scream her head off. The would be predator would be driven away but, suffice to say, some loss in trade efficiency would occur.
Child No.2, on the other hand, avoided conflict. At a very young age, he worked out that it was worthwhile just giving the other child the toy. He knew that within minutes it would be disguarded and he could retrieve it. I used to watch this in amazement. Literally, as soon as the toy was abandoned, he would swoop in and regather it. It was a model of conflict avoidance and in many respects a perfectly acceptable matching of needs and wants.
But Child No.3 has trade down. With two others in the household to contend with, when someone else expressed a desire for a toy, she would be reasoned with and accept a deal to exchange that toy, if only for a time, in return for something -- usually the offer of another activity or some attention. But she would only do it voluntarily with some upside to the deal for her.
The upshot of this is that I think that voluntary exchange and observed equilibrium behaviour amongst two year olds is an experiential thing. Hmm, just the same as for everyone else.
Are High Gas Prices Affecting the Arts?
I was reading a news story on the weekend, (which I won't link to because the Associated Press were getting a little litigious about such things), regarding how the high cost of gasoline is affecting summer touring plans for a number of fledgling indie bands, who often take to a van or small bus and comb the plains, hitting towns along the way to build a fan base and to make a little bit of money.
Basically, with gas prices so high, a lot of smaller bands are either scrapping their plans, joining forces with other bands to save cost or changing their plans and limiting their tours to the Eastern United States(and I imagine the Southern Ontario/Quebec/Great Lakes area as well).
Yes, with Social Networking sites, viral videos and the relatively cost-effective means bands now have to record themselves and get their message out, it would seem that going on tour wouldn't be such a necessity, but alas touring is still very important to establish a fan base, especially outside one's region.
And this little problem got the gears in my mind spinning wondering what else these high gas prices are affecting in the pop cultural, mass media and artistic spheres.
For instance, I have a feeling that there are going to be a lot fewer and shorter road trips and a little less adventure for generation of college students and young adults, experiences that would become the basis for future music, novels, short stories, movie scripts and artwork. Think about all the ponderous and long-winded travelogues filled with recollections of quaint little truck stops, earthy real people and questionable sexual relations with strangers and/or friends that we will never have the privilege of reading because gas prices were just so damn high this year. It is a world I don't even want to contemplate.
I have an inkling that the whole handicrafts industry is suffering from the high price of gasoline as well. I mean, think about all those people who are just now trying to get into the arts and crafts business, well, with gas prices the way they are, it becomes increasingly difficult to attend the many craft fairs and art shows one would would need to have a presence at to make a profit from their hours of hard work, and thus, North America will lack the crucial tchotchkes it needs to decorate its rec rooms and dens with shoddily handmade and painted woodwork. Who will think of the children who will live their lives without being terrorized by a particularly sinister looking wood sculpture of a woodchuck because the person who makes such items can't make it to a particular show in the park with their wares?
And lest I forget about the initial spark that led to these thoughts, think about midlevel musical act and their burgeoning drug habit? Think about how much it costs to transport cocaine and other controlled substances across the country in small batches... that has to raise prices, doesn't it? Do we expect the musicians of this continent to function without drugs? What sort of madness is that? Of course, they could just drink themselves into incoherence and perhaps an early grave, but where is the fun in that? No, what will probably happen is those rockers who were into coke and heroin, well, they'll have to settle for something a little closer to home... that's right... I'm talking about meth, and no one wants to see the rising star they adored as merely an abnormally lanky and pale individual with sunken and moody eyes suddenly develop rotted teeth, sores all over their face and ca-ray-zay hair, well, that isn't good for anyone. Aside from which, no one should be encouraging hillbillies to do chemistry for fun and profit.
And I am pretty sure attendance for those big open-air festivals out in the middle of the sun-baked hinterland is down, though remarkably, the high prices the promoters charge for water and food now seems justified given the price of gasoline. And perhaps the only plus of these high prices is the fact that no one will likely start a fire a la Woodstock '99, because that form of destructive protest would just be too expensive, especially after paying for tickets and a few 20 dollar slices of pizza.
To think, if I hadn't read that little story a few days ago, I wouldn't have even considered how detrimental the high price of gas was to all those lovely culturally-driven intellectually-derived careers that I so adore to critique.
Basically, with gas prices so high, a lot of smaller bands are either scrapping their plans, joining forces with other bands to save cost or changing their plans and limiting their tours to the Eastern United States(and I imagine the Southern Ontario/Quebec/Great Lakes area as well).
Yes, with Social Networking sites, viral videos and the relatively cost-effective means bands now have to record themselves and get their message out, it would seem that going on tour wouldn't be such a necessity, but alas touring is still very important to establish a fan base, especially outside one's region.
And this little problem got the gears in my mind spinning wondering what else these high gas prices are affecting in the pop cultural, mass media and artistic spheres.
For instance, I have a feeling that there are going to be a lot fewer and shorter road trips and a little less adventure for generation of college students and young adults, experiences that would become the basis for future music, novels, short stories, movie scripts and artwork. Think about all the ponderous and long-winded travelogues filled with recollections of quaint little truck stops, earthy real people and questionable sexual relations with strangers and/or friends that we will never have the privilege of reading because gas prices were just so damn high this year. It is a world I don't even want to contemplate.
I have an inkling that the whole handicrafts industry is suffering from the high price of gasoline as well. I mean, think about all those people who are just now trying to get into the arts and crafts business, well, with gas prices the way they are, it becomes increasingly difficult to attend the many craft fairs and art shows one would would need to have a presence at to make a profit from their hours of hard work, and thus, North America will lack the crucial tchotchkes it needs to decorate its rec rooms and dens with shoddily handmade and painted woodwork. Who will think of the children who will live their lives without being terrorized by a particularly sinister looking wood sculpture of a woodchuck because the person who makes such items can't make it to a particular show in the park with their wares?
And lest I forget about the initial spark that led to these thoughts, think about midlevel musical act and their burgeoning drug habit? Think about how much it costs to transport cocaine and other controlled substances across the country in small batches... that has to raise prices, doesn't it? Do we expect the musicians of this continent to function without drugs? What sort of madness is that? Of course, they could just drink themselves into incoherence and perhaps an early grave, but where is the fun in that? No, what will probably happen is those rockers who were into coke and heroin, well, they'll have to settle for something a little closer to home... that's right... I'm talking about meth, and no one wants to see the rising star they adored as merely an abnormally lanky and pale individual with sunken and moody eyes suddenly develop rotted teeth, sores all over their face and ca-ray-zay hair, well, that isn't good for anyone. Aside from which, no one should be encouraging hillbillies to do chemistry for fun and profit.
And I am pretty sure attendance for those big open-air festivals out in the middle of the sun-baked hinterland is down, though remarkably, the high prices the promoters charge for water and food now seems justified given the price of gasoline. And perhaps the only plus of these high prices is the fact that no one will likely start a fire a la Woodstock '99, because that form of destructive protest would just be too expensive, especially after paying for tickets and a few 20 dollar slices of pizza.
To think, if I hadn't read that little story a few days ago, I wouldn't have even considered how detrimental the high price of gas was to all those lovely culturally-driven intellectually-derived careers that I so adore to critique.
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The Joy of Spore
Everyone seemed to be saying Spore was coming but I hadn't paid much attention to it. But last week the folks from EA Games posted the Spore Creature Creator, a program where you could make some of the creatures that you could play with in the full game. I must admit that I thought that it was a cheap gimmick but with a free trial download decided to check it out.
It was simply incredible. I would have bought the full version immediately but for the fact that there is no Mac download and apparently you can't buy it in Australia! In any case, my 7 year old son took to it as if it was the greatest thing ever. Basically, even in the crimped trial version you can create creatures with stunning 3D rendering and an amazing array of options. This was a program made for his mind. Over the last few days he has created 84 creatures, each with its own name and distinctive features. (I can only imagine what he will do with the full version).
Spore allows you to upload you creations to your own page. My son's is The Honk and you can see 33 of his creatures right there. For instance, here is one based on the Flanimal, Blunging. But most of his creatures are right from his own mind. In all of his early work, it was a requirement that a creature had a non-standard number of eyes, limbs and heads. You really want to be any of these things. Later on, a couple of days later, his work matured into things that might be more practical. The sheer flexibility in the design is just incredible. It will be amazing to see how all this comes together in the full game. I cannot recommend the trial at least highly enough.
One of my favourites is my son's rendition of his Pleo dinosaur (click here). The program allows you to film your creature in action and then to upload the video straight to YouTube. So here is his Pleo and its children doing some tricks.
It was simply incredible. I would have bought the full version immediately but for the fact that there is no Mac download and apparently you can't buy it in Australia! In any case, my 7 year old son took to it as if it was the greatest thing ever. Basically, even in the crimped trial version you can create creatures with stunning 3D rendering and an amazing array of options. This was a program made for his mind. Over the last few days he has created 84 creatures, each with its own name and distinctive features. (I can only imagine what he will do with the full version).
Spore allows you to upload you creations to your own page. My son's is The Honk and you can see 33 of his creatures right there. For instance, here is one based on the Flanimal, Blunging. But most of his creatures are right from his own mind. In all of his early work, it was a requirement that a creature had a non-standard number of eyes, limbs and heads. You really want to be any of these things. Later on, a couple of days later, his work matured into things that might be more practical. The sheer flexibility in the design is just incredible. It will be amazing to see how all this comes together in the full game. I cannot recommend the trial at least highly enough.One of my favourites is my son's rendition of his Pleo dinosaur (click here). The program allows you to film your creature in action and then to upload the video straight to YouTube. So here is his Pleo and its children doing some tricks.
In that genre
So I have been told that Parentonomics possibly falls in the genre of parenting books combined with humour, where humour and economics are interchangeable in the book publishing world. For that reason I thought I should read some recent books in that genre. This is something I haven't done for some time. Indeed, the last time was pre-children with Paul Reiser's Babyhood. I pulled that one off the shelf and it is still pretty funny. It is a book that is pre-blogging but in many respects it really reads like a collection of little posts (something I have tried to avoid when putting together Parentonomics).
Anyhow, following on the comedian angle, recently released is a book by Kevin Nealon. I used to watch him on Saturday Night Live and I think he occasionally pops up in movies. But I chose that book primarily because I was sitting at the next table to him in an LA airport lounge last year and he looked pretty much like the picture on the front of his book. Interestingly, he had bought a Sony eBook reader just as the Kindle had come out and I was puzzled about this. Maybe it was for the flight only to discover he was going to need a computer to get at those books.
His book is about his experience in pregnancy -- not his really but his wife's. He is 53 and so is older than the average parent and also, his celebrity lifestyle defined much of what he was going through. There was lots of angst about having children and feelings about life in general which gave him an excuse to recount previous non-parenting incidents with random abandon. It had its moments but there was not alot that I found easy to relate to. Nonetheless, I suspect that if you are pregnant (or close to one who is) this would be a good read.
His book is about his experience in pregnancy -- not his really but his wife's. He is 53 and so is older than the average parent and also, his celebrity lifestyle defined much of what he was going through. There was lots of angst about having children and feelings about life in general which gave him an excuse to recount previous non-parenting incidents with random abandon. It had its moments but there was not alot that I found easy to relate to. Nonetheless, I suspect that if you are pregnant (or close to one who is) this would be a good read.
That said Nealon's promotional videos on Amazon are fun. In this example, he shows how to save money working out how to babyproof your house. We had the same idea but we just invited over friends with toddlers. That still seems to me to be a better experiment aside from the 'interfering' parents who didn't let some things run their course.
The final book I picked up is an edited volume by Heather B. Armstrong. She picks the best of parenting bloggers and has them write about Fatherhood. But surprisingly, the chapters do not read like blog posts but really a collection of stories. One of these I have linked to before (on Star Wars), but the story by Matthew Baldwin that likens pregnancy to The Return of the King was an absolute classic (here is a taste of that). And there are some others that hit the mark. This is definitely one to take a look at the next time you are browsing.
The final book I picked up is an edited volume by Heather B. Armstrong. She picks the best of parenting bloggers and has them write about Fatherhood. But surprisingly, the chapters do not read like blog posts but really a collection of stories. One of these I have linked to before (on Star Wars), but the story by Matthew Baldwin that likens pregnancy to The Return of the King was an absolute classic (here is a taste of that). And there are some others that hit the mark. This is definitely one to take a look at the next time you are browsing.
But all in all I was assured that perhaps what I am offering is a little more unique. It is a crowded genre but I took some comfort that somehow I have emerged from the parenting experience with a distinct perspective.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Emotional bias?
You know, I like Tyler Cowen's writings and think well of his economics. But this Bloggingheads TV discussion he was part of had me reeling. [HT: Althouse]
(Here is the whole bit for context). Near as I can tell Tyler is arguing that mother's feel emotional 'costs' of their children more than fathers and this leads children being "over-something" as a result of an asymmetry in bargaining power between mothers and fathers.
Wow, for an economist who you would think would be prone to evidence, I had no idea where this theory came from. Tyler seems to think that mothers are prone to resist their children making investments (such as learning to drive) because they will do more of it and hence, the mothers will worry more. Apparently, fathers can see through this (more 'abstractly'). I think Tyler seems to think that has something to do with evolutionary bias (e.g., mothers want to avoid immediate disaster). But that is a real stretch. Do mothers really get their way more often on parenting even taking into account differences in how often they are 'on the ground'? Tyler seems to be arguing that a mother's emotional commitment gives her a greater degree of bargaining power in conflictual parenting decisions.
This type of gender-based extrapolation of different parenting styles is something that is beyond my experience, I can't really imagine a theory for it (except maybe just after giving birth when there other physiological asymmetries at play), and there is no evidence I am aware of to suggest such a thing. Let me tell you emotional reactions in parenting are hardly the exclusive domain of women -- just ask my kids who have seen fury, rage and gut reactions from me as much as they have from their mother. In many respects, we have substantive agreement on parenting issues but in other situations, we alternate the 'good cop' and 'bad cop' roles to negotiate outcomes. No parenting decision is a two way negotiation between parents. It is at least three and possibly more in terms of negotiation. That is the larger bargain and it seems to me that gender issues fade well into the background on that.
Wow, for an economist who you would think would be prone to evidence, I had no idea where this theory came from. Tyler seems to think that mothers are prone to resist their children making investments (such as learning to drive) because they will do more of it and hence, the mothers will worry more. Apparently, fathers can see through this (more 'abstractly'). I think Tyler seems to think that has something to do with evolutionary bias (e.g., mothers want to avoid immediate disaster). But that is a real stretch. Do mothers really get their way more often on parenting even taking into account differences in how often they are 'on the ground'? Tyler seems to be arguing that a mother's emotional commitment gives her a greater degree of bargaining power in conflictual parenting decisions.
This type of gender-based extrapolation of different parenting styles is something that is beyond my experience, I can't really imagine a theory for it (except maybe just after giving birth when there other physiological asymmetries at play), and there is no evidence I am aware of to suggest such a thing. Let me tell you emotional reactions in parenting are hardly the exclusive domain of women -- just ask my kids who have seen fury, rage and gut reactions from me as much as they have from their mother. In many respects, we have substantive agreement on parenting issues but in other situations, we alternate the 'good cop' and 'bad cop' roles to negotiate outcomes. No parenting decision is a two way negotiation between parents. It is at least three and possibly more in terms of negotiation. That is the larger bargain and it seems to me that gender issues fade well into the background on that.
George Carlin: A Eulogy
I had another post on tap for this afternoon, but after hearing about George Carlin's death from heart failure, well, I felt I had to eulogize him.
In writing this post, I could easily post a lot of video clips, because if George Carlin was anything, he was a prodigious producer of material, but I thought better of it.
Yes, he wrote and performed some of the most iconic and recognizable routines in modern comedy, from his early standup on The Ed Sullivan Show to the Seven Words you Can Never Say on Television to litany of HBO specials he filmed at roughly 2 year intervals since the late 1970's. He was also the first host of Saturday Night Live, so there is quite a lot of footage out there.
George Carlin had one of the longest comedic careers of relevance in the modern history of that discipline. Now, I am not talking about just having career longevity, because clearly men like George Burns and Bob Hope had him beat in that regard. No, rather I mean that even up to the time of his death, he was continuing to poke and prod at sensitive issues. He didn't rest on his laurels. He was a fearless comic who inspired multiple generations of comedians, and for that alone, he should be cherished.
But his continuing excellence as a standup after so many years, that was beyond admirable, it was astonishing. Usually the renegades burnout or fade from view, but Carlin was nearly ever-present through the past 40 years. He was one of those iconic people that seemed like they would always be around, commenting on our social foibles, our consumerist culture, the oddities of our language and the collective car wreck of the modern political system and the men and women who inhabited that sphere. He was a pioneer, and I am sure there will be a lot of tributes from his peers in the coming days and weeks.
Now, I know that there was some general disappointment about certain episode of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno which featured George Carlin and Ann Coulter where he did not engage her in any meaningful way, but he later explained that he was showing her some professional courtesy on an entertainment program, and it was neither the time nor the place for such a discussion. Plus, in his words, she was a zealot that doesn't respond to nuanced arguments. So even in explaining that situation, he still got in a good zinger at her expense. Bravo.
Of course, I am fully expecting a eulogy from Fox News like this, because he certainly poked at the interests and values they represent with vigor and wit, and if they choose to attack him in death, well, it certainly shows a lot of class on their part, doesn't it?
Now when I was looking into that appearance on the Tonight Show with Coulter, I came across another quote which seemed to sum things up nicely:
"Look, comedy is very much what it always was for stand-ups like me: a person with some jokes and ideas to share. I do this to show off and to satisfy my left brain, because I am a show off. But I don't think of comedy as ``going" anywhere, except maybe to the beach on a hot day."
I couldn't have summed it up better myself.
In writing this post, I could easily post a lot of video clips, because if George Carlin was anything, he was a prodigious producer of material, but I thought better of it.
Yes, he wrote and performed some of the most iconic and recognizable routines in modern comedy, from his early standup on The Ed Sullivan Show to the Seven Words you Can Never Say on Television to litany of HBO specials he filmed at roughly 2 year intervals since the late 1970's. He was also the first host of Saturday Night Live, so there is quite a lot of footage out there.
George Carlin had one of the longest comedic careers of relevance in the modern history of that discipline. Now, I am not talking about just having career longevity, because clearly men like George Burns and Bob Hope had him beat in that regard. No, rather I mean that even up to the time of his death, he was continuing to poke and prod at sensitive issues. He didn't rest on his laurels. He was a fearless comic who inspired multiple generations of comedians, and for that alone, he should be cherished.
But his continuing excellence as a standup after so many years, that was beyond admirable, it was astonishing. Usually the renegades burnout or fade from view, but Carlin was nearly ever-present through the past 40 years. He was one of those iconic people that seemed like they would always be around, commenting on our social foibles, our consumerist culture, the oddities of our language and the collective car wreck of the modern political system and the men and women who inhabited that sphere. He was a pioneer, and I am sure there will be a lot of tributes from his peers in the coming days and weeks.
Now, I know that there was some general disappointment about certain episode of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno which featured George Carlin and Ann Coulter where he did not engage her in any meaningful way, but he later explained that he was showing her some professional courtesy on an entertainment program, and it was neither the time nor the place for such a discussion. Plus, in his words, she was a zealot that doesn't respond to nuanced arguments. So even in explaining that situation, he still got in a good zinger at her expense. Bravo.
Of course, I am fully expecting a eulogy from Fox News like this, because he certainly poked at the interests and values they represent with vigor and wit, and if they choose to attack him in death, well, it certainly shows a lot of class on their part, doesn't it?
Now when I was looking into that appearance on the Tonight Show with Coulter, I came across another quote which seemed to sum things up nicely:
"Look, comedy is very much what it always was for stand-ups like me: a person with some jokes and ideas to share. I do this to show off and to satisfy my left brain, because I am a show off. But I don't think of comedy as ``going" anywhere, except maybe to the beach on a hot day."
I couldn't have summed it up better myself.
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Sunday, June 22, 2008
Sunday Night Video: Black Bar Ballet
OK, this one might not be safe for work even though technically, you don't see anything.
So what do you get when you get a lot of young, fit people with few inhibitions, a song featuring David Byrne and Dizzee Rascal and a lot of black bars covering the good bits in fun and creative ways?
You get the music video for BPA's Toe Jam.
I dig the fact that the director went for a 1970's look for the wardrobe, hairstyles and furnishings, because that adds to the ambiance.
You have to admit that if you watched this Monday morning, it was a fun way to wake up.
So what do you get when you get a lot of young, fit people with few inhibitions, a song featuring David Byrne and Dizzee Rascal and a lot of black bars covering the good bits in fun and creative ways?
You get the music video for BPA's Toe Jam.
I dig the fact that the director went for a 1970's look for the wardrobe, hairstyles and furnishings, because that adds to the ambiance.
You have to admit that if you watched this Monday morning, it was a fun way to wake up.
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Getting the classical facts
Yesterday, I took -- OK dragged -- my two eldest to the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. They were performing a set of 'Space Classics' which was basically stuff by John Williams plus a few others. When I was a child, this would have been right up there is a top class, highly rated activity. The pieces included much of the good stuff from Star Wars, although somewhat inexplicably, Jabba the Hut's theme which was a tuba beating out some grunts. But it also included other Williams' classics from Close Encounters, ET, Superman and Jerry Goldsmith's fantastic theme from Star Trek: The Motion Picture. It also included three of Holst's Planets but that was mere filler. Sure, they have good moments but really they don't stack up to modern imagery.
That said, my son decided right from the start that this is not the place he wanted to be and for the next two hours he asked every 15 minutes, how much longer? To be sure, our view from the stalls was not too great but I had hoped some peaceful enjoyment of the music might sink in. But it was not to be.
During the intermission, I created a game. The conductor would introduce pieces and get stuff wrong. Talking about things like "Luke Starwalker," "CP3O," 7 planets in the solar system (even dumping Pluto he was getting confused with Holst's 7 other planets and it went on. He couldn't even tell his "Duel of the Fates" from "Across the Stars"! So basically, the game became: count the number of obvious conductorial errors. That kept things going until the end but the lack of accuracy did little to sell him on the experience.
My son has invented a rating system for 'funness.' For any given day, he rates activities of the day and gives us, his parents, a score. '1' is the benchmark. Exceed that and the day is classed as 'fun' but below it is not. It is basically a form of 360 degree performance evaluation. Most of the time I welcome the feedback.
Anyhow, prior to the MSO we had lunch, watched some street theatre and a few storm troopers (who I'll tell you this, look to short for a storm trooper) wandering around. And my son's rating: "It is a .5. It would have been 3/4's if the concert had been half an hour shorter." I had thought about leaving during intermission. His rating would have gone up but mine and my daughter's would have gone down. Besides he needs a little learning in making the most of what he perceives as a bad situation.
[Update: OK, maybe I should have just taken one kid as Emily Bazelon suggests].
That said, my son decided right from the start that this is not the place he wanted to be and for the next two hours he asked every 15 minutes, how much longer? To be sure, our view from the stalls was not too great but I had hoped some peaceful enjoyment of the music might sink in. But it was not to be.
During the intermission, I created a game. The conductor would introduce pieces and get stuff wrong. Talking about things like "Luke Starwalker," "CP3O," 7 planets in the solar system (even dumping Pluto he was getting confused with Holst's 7 other planets and it went on. He couldn't even tell his "Duel of the Fates" from "Across the Stars"! So basically, the game became: count the number of obvious conductorial errors. That kept things going until the end but the lack of accuracy did little to sell him on the experience.
My son has invented a rating system for 'funness.' For any given day, he rates activities of the day and gives us, his parents, a score. '1' is the benchmark. Exceed that and the day is classed as 'fun' but below it is not. It is basically a form of 360 degree performance evaluation. Most of the time I welcome the feedback.
Anyhow, prior to the MSO we had lunch, watched some street theatre and a few storm troopers (who I'll tell you this, look to short for a storm trooper) wandering around. And my son's rating: "It is a .5. It would have been 3/4's if the concert had been half an hour shorter." I had thought about leaving during intermission. His rating would have gone up but mine and my daughter's would have gone down. Besides he needs a little learning in making the most of what he perceives as a bad situation.
[Update: OK, maybe I should have just taken one kid as Emily Bazelon suggests].
Facebook Group
A friend has set up a group on Facebook for all things Parentonomics. It will be a place for news and maybe reviews. The group is open so please feel free to join. (Just search for 'parentonomics' on Facebook)
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Entrepreneurial update
Child No.1's chocolate shop has now closed. She raised $215 for her Taekwondo club and did so without one single cent coming from parents or their co-workers. What is more, the stock she had was valued at $192 and so her pricing policy actually yielded a super-normal profit of $23. I couldn't be more proud of this endeavour. However, her biggest thrill was that this achievement appeared to best some of the whole teams forced to do similar activities on The Apprentice operating with far fewer constraints and much more time. Are you listening Donald Trump? Me thinks you are looking for talent in the wrong age group.
Holding back for no reason
Casual observation suggests that many parents are holding their children back a grade to improve their academic performance later on. The theory is that for some kids, not being behind in the pack can help them stay with the pack and assist learning. The problem is that studies of whether this actually helps or not are plagued by the likely fact that parents who choose to hold kids back might be doing so for reasons beyond simple learning; e.g., for other socialisation or maturity factors that confound later measurement of performance.
A new study looks at a Norwegian 'experiment' that takes parental choice out of the equation. In Norway, children start school based on the year they turn 7. So if you are born on December 31 you are a year ahead of a child born the next day. Effectively the same age but the New Year's Baby has been randomly red-shirted. The authors then look at the measured IQ of children entering the military at age 18 (apparently most people) and relate it to these date issues.
It turns out the age you start school matters little for the IQ test score at age 18. But those who start school late have reduced earnings up until about age 30.
The upshot of this is that there are no reasons to hold kids back or time births for some age advantage in class. It is not clear whether it goes the other way -- that is, we don't know if accelerating kids might help. My guess is that more caution in terms of moving around school entry away from standard practice should be the rule for parents rather than erring on the side of having your child be the oldest in the class.
A new study looks at a Norwegian 'experiment' that takes parental choice out of the equation. In Norway, children start school based on the year they turn 7. So if you are born on December 31 you are a year ahead of a child born the next day. Effectively the same age but the New Year's Baby has been randomly red-shirted. The authors then look at the measured IQ of children entering the military at age 18 (apparently most people) and relate it to these date issues.
It turns out the age you start school matters little for the IQ test score at age 18. But those who start school late have reduced earnings up until about age 30.
The upshot of this is that there are no reasons to hold kids back or time births for some age advantage in class. It is not clear whether it goes the other way -- that is, we don't know if accelerating kids might help. My guess is that more caution in terms of moving around school entry away from standard practice should be the rule for parents rather than erring on the side of having your child be the oldest in the class.
Friday, June 20, 2008
A movie about incentives
The much anticipated Kung Fu Panda hit our cinemas today. Actually, it had a tough job to overcome following trailers to Wall-E, Madagascar 2 and The Clone Wars. Nonetheless, it was much as expected, a light-hearted homage to the martial arts genre. You know the drill, an anoited one is to be anoited and rather than being one of the 5 animals who had trained for it their entire lives, it someone ends up being a panda who gets the nod for what everyone including the panda but not the 'accident denying' turtle believes was, in fact, an accident.
The issue then becomes how to make this fairly bad state of affairs work against a snow leopard ,Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, former pupil character who is coming back to do bad things but, in reality, is just ticked off. And it turns out that the answer, and I am not giving too much away for those who have seen the trailer, is to get the incentives right. In particular, so long as said panda is appropriately motivated -- in his case, by food -- he can pretty much do anything and what should be a lifetime of training is compressed into what appears to be only a day of food related hijinks. The message for all the kids and parents out there is simple: anyone can be great so long as you put the right carrots, or in this case, Chinese food, in place. Our kids left the movie with this message firmly in place and hungry -- well, for lunch.
The issue then becomes how to make this fairly bad state of affairs work against a snow leopard ,Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, former pupil character who is coming back to do bad things but, in reality, is just ticked off. And it turns out that the answer, and I am not giving too much away for those who have seen the trailer, is to get the incentives right. In particular, so long as said panda is appropriately motivated -- in his case, by food -- he can pretty much do anything and what should be a lifetime of training is compressed into what appears to be only a day of food related hijinks. The message for all the kids and parents out there is simple: anyone can be great so long as you put the right carrots, or in this case, Chinese food, in place. Our kids left the movie with this message firmly in place and hungry -- well, for lunch.
Role reversal
Great link: Dani Rodrik's daughter in classic form writing as her father:
And now I'm jamming out to the music on my iPhone in celebration while my daughter is coping with her crap iPod from 1923. You should see me play the air guitar.. mm hmm magic flows from my fingers. And I'm sure you can't wait to see me dance because that is, of course, the main attraction. When I start my daughters are so overjoyed that they have to step outside for a little. They tell me that it's because they don't want to be seen with me, but I know it's really to suppress their misery that this gene was not passed on to them.
Week 6: Pageant of the Transmundane
Hello from the streets of San Francisco. My, there is a lot of storied history here, but as I am not that cultured, well, most of it is lost on me. Not that there is anything wrong with that. Oh look, a hot air balloon... wait, that's Barry Bonds' head.
Anyway, I love a good steal, and this week's winner pulled of a great one. Just hours before this little bad boy was going to be posted, well, Dr. Monkey von Monkerstein scored a coup.
The winning entry is a posted video from the British comedic duo Mitchell and Webb (who are PC and Mac in the British Apple Commercials) featuring the real life version of something I had only seen on South Park, and seeing it fleshed out, well, it brings a whole new level of OMG! to the situation, and in a strange way, it is sort of related.
I just wish I could have found an image of the South Parkified version of Homer, because really, that would have been the most appropriate display image for this award. However, Homer pointing at his ass, well, that is close enough for this Transmundanity Award.
Congratulations Herr Doktor on this wonderful instance of winning by a nose.
The rules of this little contest: Every week I will be selecting one blog post that I have seen from the vast reaches of the blogosphere to bestow with the Homer Simpson Transmundanity Award for being one of the freakiest(in a funny way) things I've seen or read during a 7 day period. It doesn't necessarily have to have been written during the week, I just had to have encountered it. That means that if you find something interesting and repost it like a movie or whatever, if I saw it at your blog first, you get the prize. Of course, creating your own content is also a very good way to win.
Now, if you see a post that you think is worthy of this illustrious prize, just drop me a line at campybeaver@gmail.com and we'll see if we can't get your suggestion up and award-ready while giving you some credit and a link to your own blog.
Anyway, I love a good steal, and this week's winner pulled of a great one. Just hours before this little bad boy was going to be posted, well, Dr. Monkey von Monkerstein scored a coup.
The winning entry is a posted video from the British comedic duo Mitchell and Webb (who are PC and Mac in the British Apple Commercials) featuring the real life version of something I had only seen on South Park, and seeing it fleshed out, well, it brings a whole new level of OMG! to the situation, and in a strange way, it is sort of related.
I just wish I could have found an image of the South Parkified version of Homer, because really, that would have been the most appropriate display image for this award. However, Homer pointing at his ass, well, that is close enough for this Transmundanity Award.
Congratulations Herr Doktor on this wonderful instance of winning by a nose.
The rules of this little contest: Every week I will be selecting one blog post that I have seen from the vast reaches of the blogosphere to bestow with the Homer Simpson Transmundanity Award for being one of the freakiest(in a funny way) things I've seen or read during a 7 day period. It doesn't necessarily have to have been written during the week, I just had to have encountered it. That means that if you find something interesting and repost it like a movie or whatever, if I saw it at your blog first, you get the prize. Of course, creating your own content is also a very good way to win.
Now, if you see a post that you think is worthy of this illustrious prize, just drop me a line at campybeaver@gmail.com and we'll see if we can't get your suggestion up and award-ready while giving you some credit and a link to your own blog.
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Code Review: I/O Videos, Gears release, App Engine examples, and more
We are trying an experiment, putting up Code Review in a variety of formats, from text to audio (iTunes) and video.
You have probably heard by now, but all of the slides and video of the presentations at Google I/O are now available to watch and read. There are some real gems in there, such as Steve Yegge talking about dynamic languages and server side JavaScript.
Just as we come down from I/O, we head off to Google Developer Day events around the world. I am personally off to Brazil and Mexico City, and I am looking forward to meeting the local developers.
I gave a tech talk at Yahoo! where I discussed Google Back to Front, covering Gears and App Engine. I shared a simple App Engine example that takes a Gears-enabled Addressbook application that shows how you can store history in a visual way, and ports it to save the data on App Engine. You can watch a code walk through to see it in action.
Dick Wall (Google) and James Ward (Adobe) also got together to create an AIR application that talks to App Engine on the back end. The application, called QuickFix, takes a photo and has App Engine run the Picasa "I'm Feeling Lucky" transformation.
It is really fun to watch the great applications being built on App Engine already, such as Wordle, which builds "word clouds" from a series of text.
One final piece of news on App Engine. Nick Johnson (Google) created a little application in his spare time (read: not official) that is quite useful. smtp2web.com bridges SMTP to HTTP. This means that you can have your App Engine applications accepting email as input via the proxy. smtp2web will send an HTTP request when it gets an email on its doorstep.
There has been a lot of focus on the browser this week. Mozilla released Firefox 3, and look like they have set a download record in the process. There was a lot of browser news though, including all of the major vendors.
The standards are moving too. HTML 5 has a new working draft, and we are seeing the germination of an Acid4 series of tests.
When it comes to Gears, we saw the full release of version 0.3 which included support for the new Firefox 3 browser. It also includes the ability to create desktop shortcuts, new install flow support, progress events, and much more.
We also saw more frameworks baking Gears in. Appcelerator uses Gears under the hood to make your existing Appcelerator based application a better user experience. Also, Frizione is a JavaScript development, testing, and deployment environment that also has Gears under the hood.
Speaking of testing, Markus Clermont and John Thomas wrote up an introduction to testing Ajax applications, something that is notoriously hard to do.
The Geo world is cooking as usual, and you can check out the numerous election mashups as the season continues to blossom.
If you fancy some fun on Google Maps, Katsuomi Kobayashi has created a 2D Driving Simulator using the new Flash API.
The folks at 360cities also have a great new interface that uses the Flash API, and they also seem to use every other Geo related product. We were fortunate enough to have them come in and sit down with them, and get a bunch of demos.
What else?
If you care about the social Web, check out Kevin Marks post on how not to be viral. It makes you think long term about your strategy.
Kevin Lim posted on the Custom Search API and the new developer guide. This API always surprises me with its richness, and how you can create a fantastic, custom, search experience on your own Web site.
Related to that API, we have another new AJAX Search API, Patent Search. I have to admit, I feel sorry for you if you have to use it (due to the content)!
And to finish up, Michael Ogawa has created some great visualizations of open source projects over time, such as the history of the Python code base. Check it out below.
As always, thanks for reading, listening, or watching, and let us know if there is anything that you would like to see.
T-Shirts, T-Shirts, T-Shirts: is there anything you can't express?
I guess you can say I finally sold out. I've given into my creative and capitalist urges and now you all have to hear about it.
You see, I recently started a T-shirt shop called Pop Culture Sugar that is sort of tangential to this blog (and you can tell it is something I was involved with because of the greens, always with the greens).
Now, I don't have designs associated with this blog per say (because let's face it, I don't think very many people absolutely clamoring to wear a t-shirt with this blog's logo on it at the moment), but the shirts are Pop Culture-related so I figured it was all good to mention them here, after all, I am a man of infinite humility and modesty who would never do anything that would bring attention to myself. If you click on the pictures, you can see all the items with that design on them.
I had this shirt in mind for a few months now... ever since "I drink your milkshake, I drink it up!" made a long swinging pass through our collective pop cultural experience, and I thought, there are a lot of these things... why not have a t-shirt that basically covers them all? And thus, a T-shirt was born.
Starbucks was a relatively easy target, I must admit, but it was fun designing that logo. I don't hate Starbucks, but I am not a fan either, so I guess it is ok. At least, that's how I am rationalizing it.
Kermit the Frog + a dirty mind made this slogan an easy choice for me. Could it be a little more tasteful? Perhaps. I am willing to concede that. But I thought it was funny. Mostly it is for the ladies out there, but I kept in mind that there may be some dudes that could totally rock that, so I made one for them too.
And well, the first one is the granddaddy of them all. If you remember back in November, I had mentioned I saw that t-shirt, and I just had to comment on it, and well, I lied. I made it, and I was too chickenshit to admit it, because I didn't want to get involved in some prolonged political discussion. I like David Palmer, and I liked Barack Obama's oratory style, so it seemed like a winner to me (and talk about picking a winning horse in that race early... I wish I would have got some money down on that back when I made the shirt).
Of course, when I started testing the features of Spreadshirt, I wanted to see what I could do with an image I already had, so I just moved it on over to the new shop. But I couldn't just have an Obama shirt, as I am bound by some weird version of the Fairness Doctrine, so somehow the whole candidate as television character analogy spun into this:
Yeah, I'm just that classy. Though it could have been worse... I could have made the Matlock into a Grampa Simpson worthy MAAAAAAAAAATLOCK, but I thought that would be a little too over the top.
After I make a few sales, I have quite a few more shirts/designs planned, so this is likely not the last time you hear about this.
I would also like to congratulate my esteemed peer Becca from No Smoking in the Skullcave on the opening of her own shop this week as well, and I wish her much success at Wizard World next week.
You see, I recently started a T-shirt shop called Pop Culture Sugar that is sort of tangential to this blog (and you can tell it is something I was involved with because of the greens, always with the greens).
Now, I don't have designs associated with this blog per say (because let's face it, I don't think very many people absolutely clamoring to wear a t-shirt with this blog's logo on it at the moment), but the shirts are Pop Culture-related so I figured it was all good to mention them here, after all, I am a man of infinite humility and modesty who would never do anything that would bring attention to myself. If you click on the pictures, you can see all the items with that design on them.
I had this shirt in mind for a few months now... ever since "I drink your milkshake, I drink it up!" made a long swinging pass through our collective pop cultural experience, and I thought, there are a lot of these things... why not have a t-shirt that basically covers them all? And thus, a T-shirt was born.
Starbucks was a relatively easy target, I must admit, but it was fun designing that logo. I don't hate Starbucks, but I am not a fan either, so I guess it is ok. At least, that's how I am rationalizing it.
Kermit the Frog + a dirty mind made this slogan an easy choice for me. Could it be a little more tasteful? Perhaps. I am willing to concede that. But I thought it was funny. Mostly it is for the ladies out there, but I kept in mind that there may be some dudes that could totally rock that, so I made one for them too.
And well, the first one is the granddaddy of them all. If you remember back in November, I had mentioned I saw that t-shirt, and I just had to comment on it, and well, I lied. I made it, and I was too chickenshit to admit it, because I didn't want to get involved in some prolonged political discussion. I like David Palmer, and I liked Barack Obama's oratory style, so it seemed like a winner to me (and talk about picking a winning horse in that race early... I wish I would have got some money down on that back when I made the shirt).
Of course, when I started testing the features of Spreadshirt, I wanted to see what I could do with an image I already had, so I just moved it on over to the new shop. But I couldn't just have an Obama shirt, as I am bound by some weird version of the Fairness Doctrine, so somehow the whole candidate as television character analogy spun into this:
Yeah, I'm just that classy. Though it could have been worse... I could have made the Matlock into a Grampa Simpson worthy MAAAAAAAAAATLOCK, but I thought that would be a little too over the top.
After I make a few sales, I have quite a few more shirts/designs planned, so this is likely not the last time you hear about this.
I would also like to congratulate my esteemed peer Becca from No Smoking in the Skullcave on the opening of her own shop this week as well, and I wish her much success at Wizard World next week.
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Thursday, June 19, 2008
Pop Culture Icons Clash in Comic Panel
Best. Picture. Ever!
I wish I knew which Flickr user put this together, because it is friggin' awesome.
I'll be making a little announcement tomorrow, so stay tuned. :)
I wish I knew which Flickr user put this together, because it is friggin' awesome.
I'll be making a little announcement tomorrow, so stay tuned. :)
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Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Aaron McGruder's R. Kelly Trial prediction
I think this may be spookier than Chris Rock's near perfect prediction about that O.J. Simpson Book.
Back in late 2005, an episode of the Boondocks aired which had to do with the trial of R. Kelly for urinating on an underage girl on tape, and despite the overwhelming evidence that he was on the tape, he was acquitted.
And just last week, R. Kelly, despite the fact that jurors believed conclusively that it was the singer on the tape, was also acquitted in the real child pornography trial.
Yeah. I guess that whole marriage to Aaliyah when she was 14 had absolutely no bearing on this case.
Back in late 2005, an episode of the Boondocks aired which had to do with the trial of R. Kelly for urinating on an underage girl on tape, and despite the overwhelming evidence that he was on the tape, he was acquitted.
And just last week, R. Kelly, despite the fact that jurors believed conclusively that it was the singer on the tape, was also acquitted in the real child pornography trial.
Yeah. I guess that whole marriage to Aaliyah when she was 14 had absolutely no bearing on this case.
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Just ask the customer ...
As usual, brilliance from The Onion:
Study Finds Most Children Not In Favor Of Children2019s Healthcare
Study Finds Most Children Not In Favor Of Children2019s Healthcare
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