First, as requested by some of my commenters, a picture of the oh-so-cute itty-bitty Silkie eggs:

Of course, you can’t really tell how itty-bitty and cute they are; it’s the two light ones up top, and they are about half (or less) the size of the others.  We’re getting about one Silkie egg a day, and still four of the other girls’ eggs daily.

This actually has something to do with my title.  We are, it seems, right on the cutting edge of popular culture.  Once again, we have dipped into the Ur, the Jungian gestalt of the United States, by having chickens.

There is a “Chicken Underground” in Madison, Wisconsin.  There are urban coop-ists in New York City.  The website BackyardChickens.com logs 6 million page views per month and has more than 18,000 members in its forums.

Whocoodanode?

Of course, this is not cheap.  One thinks of chickens as cheap and easy, but, alas, they are not.  One can compare our coops and the dotter’s egg money similarly to, say, the U.S. agriculture system.  The government subsidizes the infrastructure (OmegaMom and OmegaDad purchase and build the coop).  The government subsidizes the ongoing process (OmegaDad visits the local feed store once every month to buy chicken feed and fluff).  In return, the farmer (that would be OmegaDotter) takes care of the livestock (with help from the gummint–a constant reminder to go out and check the chickens twice daily), cleans the coops (with intense help from the gummint), sells the eggs to neighbors, the government (Chez OmegaMom) and government-sponsored entities (that would be people like OmegaDad’s coworkers, who trade frozen fresh-caught halibut or salmon for a few dozen eggs).  In the end, everyone is happy and well-fed.

Right?

Anyway, to get a glimpse of this new underworld of chicken lovers, read up on “The Craze for Urban Chickens“.  I’m sure that it will be spreading even further, as people decide that keeping chickens and growing gardens helps in this dismal economy.

In the meantime, OmegaMom and OmegaDad can rest assured that, once again, they have their fingers firmly on the pulse of America.

(ETA:  This is just too cool.  You click and drag the big box of bars over the stripes to the left.  Do it slowly.  What do you see?  I just had to share it as quickly as possible!)

I’ve purchased the tickets, and will be off to visit GrannyJ for a week before Christmas.  This leaves poor OmegaDad holding the reins of the household (and OmegaDotter) whilst I am gone.  He, being a wimp when it comes to Causing The Dotter Emotional Distress, said I had to tell her I was going.

So on the way home from swimming the other day, I broached the subject.

It was not taken with Emotional Distress, oh no.

“Yay!  Daddy and I can do whatever we want while you’re gone!”

I winced inwardly, imagining returning to a home more like a tornado has gone through it than normal.

“And we can have a party!  A disco party!”

I do not know where that came from.  Har.

So Dr. FreeRide, over at Adventures in Ethics and Science, posted about The Typealyzer, which purports to take the URL of your blog and tell you what “type” (as in Myers-Briggs type) your blog is.

Let’s just gloss over the question of whether a piece of writing can have a Myers-Briggs type.  Ahem.

Anyway, here’s what The Typealyzer had to say about Omegamom.com:

ESTP - The Doers

The active and play-ful type. They are especially attuned to people and things around them and often full of energy, talking, joking and engaging in physical out-door activities.
The Doers are happiest with action-filled work which craves their full attention and focus. They might be very impulsive and more keen on starting something new than following it through. They might have a problem with sitting still or remaining inactive for any period of time.

My response?  Bahahahaha!  OMG.  I must use a totally different area of my brain when writing than when, say, living my life.  Every single time I take a Myers-Briggs assessment, I end up being typed as an INTP.  Every once in a while, since the dotter has entered my life, I type as an INFP.  (Oh, well, at least I got the TP out of it…)  This is so far off from my own personality type that it’s like night and day, or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

If you have a blog, you must run it through this little black box, and come back to tell me what “type” your blog is, and whether it is as far off from your “type” as this one is for me.  I’ve just gotta know!

Just think what the people 40 years ago, funded by DARPA, looking at a new way to (a) protect communication in the face of a nuclear strike and (b) share research quickly, would think of if they looked at the ‘tubes of today.  I’m sure they would have never conceived of a world where people could buy just about whatever they wanted without leaving their computer, or the way that the music industry has been rocked to its core.

Definitely, they would never have envisioned the lively political debate that it has fostered.

Oh!  Did someone say “political debate”?! 

And I’m sure those intrepid internet pioneers would never have considered a world where such joys as this are available:

I do.  I truly do luuurve Teh Intarwebs.  They rawk!

Remember how I asked here whether Obama is supposed to be the anti-Christ, because some folks were giving us rally-ers the devil’s horn, as opposed to the finger?

Well, apparently I’m just a sweet, innocent naif from Alaska, wide-eyed and gobsmacked, because, yes, Virginia, there are folks who think Obama is the anti-Christ and that’s why they’re not going to vote for him.

Really and truly.

I was whacked by a 2×4 alongside the head with this realization when reading a 400+ comment thread on A Little Bit Pregnant.  One commenter flat-out said she wasn’t voting for Obama because he fit all the characteristics of the anti-Christ, and another one said she was pretty sure she was voting for McCain because she was merely worried that Obama might be the anti-Christ.

Setting aside the whole question of “OMG so you really believe this stuff?!”, I find myself puzzled by this approach.

Surely, if you think Obama is the anti-Christ, then you’re likely to be a person who believes in the End Times, in the Rapture wherein all good and righteous folk will be sucked up into Heaven to sit on the right-hand side of the lord, complete with halo and harp.  And you’re likely to believe that this is preceded by the second coming of Christ, which is preceded by the rise of the anti-Christ.

So wouldn’t it be logical to, say, vote for Obama in that case?  Wouldn’t that be hastening the aforementioned series of events?  Like, almost guaranteeing it?  Sing hosanna, vote Obama, get me to the Rapture on time?

(OmegaDad, when I broached this thought to him, told me that maybe these people secretly aren’t sure they’re going to be sucked up into Heaven come the Rapture, and that’s why they don’t want to vote for him.

Hmm.  This is always possible.)

Moving on:  No doubt someone will tell me that the reason for not voting for the anti-Christ is that the rise of the anti-Christ is supposed to be a time of terrible turmoil and misery for the world, and that no-one with a kind heart would want that to happen.  But…but…I thought all of that is gonna happen anyway in that world view, no matter what you do.  One way or another, the whole row of dominoes is supposed to fall; it’s all predestined.  So surely the faster it’s done, the less turmoil and tribulation, the quicker the Rapture?

I can’t wrap my head around this stuff.  I really can’t.  Here we are, living in an amazing world filled with man-made miracles, living lives of ease due to technological advances, a world where people are taking photographs of the further ends of space and the amazing intricacies of microscopic things on our own world, where people are living longer lives through the application of science, where practically every single instant of our days is touched, in some way, by science, technology, or the rational thought process…

…and there are still people out there who (first off) really, truly believe that there is such a thing as the anti-Christ, and (secondly) really, truly believe that Obama is him.  When I come across people like this, I think to myself (and come mighty darned close to saying out loud, or typing out), “You are just bat-shit crazy.”  Whoops!  There goes any pretense to tolerance I have.  Sorry…but there it is.

It’s a Bizarro World, indeed.

Do you ever have those moments of total paranoia?  The kind where you’re sure everyone else has telepathy but you, and you just know they’re laughing at you and pitying you?  Or where you finally settle down to sleep for the night and then all the dogs in the neighborhood start barking, very loudly, for a long, long time, and you’re sure that Someone Is Out To Get You?

You don’t?

Oh.

It’s just me, then?

Oh.

Well, yeah, sure, I knew that all along; I was just joshin’ witya, y’know?

Ahem.

Anyway, one of my ongoing paranoiac sureties in life is that when I have a Great Idea, somehow or other I am really subconsciously broadcasting it nonstop over the Jungian undermind.  That’s why, when I started plotting a really way kewl science-fiction-y novel based on the idea of a previously unknown disease spreading like wildfire through the industrialized modern world, bringing it to its knees, six months later that very same novel came out and raced up to the top of the New York Times bestseller list.  And my idea for a totally useful and helpful device for the kitchen (which I can’t remember now), which showed up at our local fancy kitchen store six months later…

Well, now it’s time for yet another one of my ideas–my abso-damn-lutely fine ideas–to be stolen by someone else via that pesky Jungian overmind.  Or undermind.  Or whatever it is.

For years, I’ve had a fantasy of owning a store, a very specialized sort of store.  One with one large room separated into four bays.  Targets at one end.  A table or rack at the other end, laden with cheap old dishes, china, and crockery purchased at the local Goodwill or Salvation Army.  One with an entrance at which I would stand by the cash register, ready to take money and hand out safety goggles and industrial-strength earmuffs to deaden the noise and direct the customers to one of the four bays.  My customers would be able to pay me…oh, I dunno, say $20?…and then spend the next half-hour enthusiastically working off all their angst and fury by throwing the dishes as hard as they could at the target at the other end of their selected bay.

I thought it was a winner.

Well, so did Sarah Lavely.

Ooooooh!  I so know she’s just been dipping into that under/overmind, looking for the Right Idea, and my idea was floating around there and she found it and she stole it, dammit!

Grrrr.

One of these days…one of these days, I’ll actually use one of my very own ideas, and be rich, I tell you, rich!

Bwahahaha!

(OmegaMom shuffles off into the distance with an Igor-like crouch, rubbing her hands and cackling about how she’ll take care of those people who steal all her ideas, yes she will.)

In my previous post, I deliberately left out a rumor that had been sweeping the internet, that Palin’s fifth child was actually her eldest daughter’s child.  First off, I don’t like repeating unsubstantiated rumors, and secondly–well, whoo boy, some of the “reasoning” that went on was just silly.

For instance, she didn’t look pregnant, and all women who are on their fifth pregnancy look much more pregnant than their first, and here’s a picture of her with her first, where she’s all blown up like a balloon, and no-one knew she was pregnant until she announced it in her 7th month.

Obviously, the people who used that as reasoning have never been around a woman who has gotten pregnant more than once–or else they have, and they assume that all women follow exactly the same pattern as the woman/women they have known.  Palin had her first child when she was a stay-at-home mom-to-be.  Now she’s a high-powered go-getter who likes to run.  I know someone who “likes to run” who was pregnant with twins, who didn’t look pregnant at all until she was in her 7th month.

Then there’s the “44-year-old women don’t get pregnant accidentally” commentary.  This was bolstered with deep discussion about the success rates for IVF for women in their 40s.

Excuse me while I howl with laughter at that one.  Haven’t these people ever heard of “oops babies” or “menopause babies”?  And applying statistics on IVF success rates for infertile women to a woman who had already had four children and is obviously fertile as all get out is…um…let me put this gently…stupid as hell.

What about the “Mat-Su Regional Medical Center’s baby nursery web page doesn’t show Trig Palin being born on that day!” excuse.  Somehow, the nursery web page is supposed to be equivalent to official hospital records.  ::blink::  The last I had heard, those nursery web pages were strictly a voluntary thing on the part of the parents.

We’ve got the “no woman in her right mind would get on an airplane to fly eight hours when she was leaking amniotic fluid!  She would have checked into the nearest hospital!”  Maybe, maybe not.  Maybe she’s not a panicky person?  Maybe she actually (gasp!) called her OB and (gasp!) asked what to do and was reassured that things would no doubt hold until she made it…home.  Yes, amazingly enough, she may have wanted to give birth at the hospital she was familiar with, with the doctor she was familiar with, surrounded by her family?  The birthing fascists are particularly appalled at this one, pointing the finger of judgmental disapproval at her for risking the life and health of her baaaaaybeee.  Wondering just how dire “leaking amniotic fluid” is, I approached Teh Mighty Google.  And nowhere did I see “OMG, get to a doctor right away, an eight-hour airplane flight is bad bad news, your baby may die!”  In fact, a lot of the websites I found said, “First, find out if it is amniotic fluid” and “it can be because of a small tear in the sac that can heal or it could be pre-term labor” and “then your doctor or midwife can help you decide what to do, depending on how premature your child is…”

My assumption:  She checked with her doctor, her doctor told her given the circumstances she could fly back home and s/he would see her the next day, and when she was seen, the doc said, looks like you’ve leaked a lot of fluid, and it’s probably best if you give birth today.

But, hey, that’s me.  It just amazes me that there’s a whole slew of women out there whose battle cry is “pregnancy is not a medical condition!” who seem to have gone bonkers at the mention that Sarah Palin was OMG leaking amniotic fluid and obviously she doesn’t have the judgement to become a vice president.  I would have thought that there’d be a whole slew of women who thought, “Hey, a mom who’s given birth four times, capable and competent, knows her body, knows how her body handles pregnancies, she and her doctor together think it’s okay to return home, way to go Sarah!”  Nope.

So I didn’t discuss that rumor. 

But this morning McCain and Palin decided to release the news that her 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, is pregnant and getting married because that rumor was getting so much notice on the intertubes.  Sigh.  Yes, I do think that Bristol’s pregnancy is relevant given Palin’s policy of support for abstinence-only sex-education.  Yes, I do think that Bristol’s pregnancy is relevant given Palin’s policy of wanting abortions to be illegal.  Yes, part of me wonders if Bristol has actually been given a real choice–abort, adopt out, have the baby–or was told what to do.  I sorrow for the abrupt change from carefree teenager-hood to parenthood for her, but am sure that she’ll do just fine given the support of her family.  I’m glad that under current laws, Bristol has the choice, and I will do what I can to ensure that my own dotter, when she is 17, also has the choice should she be in that situation.

But y’know what?  There are plenty of other things about Palin that should concern people who are voting in this election.  I don’t think, frankly, that the state of her family is anyone’s business.  Let’s concentrate on the issues, people.  There are oodles of issues that the two campaigns differ widely on.  Let’s not get caught up in gossipy, judgmental finger-pointing.

This public service announcement brought to you by OmegaMom, She Of The Shiny Halo.

On Friday, in a move calculated to upstage Obama’s Democratic presidential nomination acceptance speech, John McCain announced his surprise selection of Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska, as his running mate.

A horde of angry feminists immediately shouted that John McCain was out of touch for selecting an inexperienced, lightweight, far-right woman as his running mate as an attempt to gain their votes.  What?!  They shouted.  Do you expect us to vote for you just because you have a woman as your running mate!?  How condescending!  How blatant!  How obvious!

Well.  I, for one, do not think McCain selected Palin because he wanted to appeal to hard-core Democrats who were romanced by Hillary.  Nor was he trying to get hard-core feminists.  What I think he was trying to do (aside from shaking up the race and energizing the GOP) was to appeal to two different constituencies:  The hard-core right-wing Republicans, who were only very grudgingly willing to vote for McCain, holding their noses as they did so, and the large group of undecided independent women who were voting for Hillary because she was a woman and they were excited at the prospect of a woman in the White House.  A fair number of those women were Republicans, whose (confusing to me) dedication to gender advancement was momentarily in ascendancy over their Republicanism, but who now have a choice that is much more to their taste.  Another fair number were women who would be willing to go either way, depending on which collection of interests they felt more compelled by, and they will find Palin appealing because of her youth, her vigor, her integrity, and her story.

In other words, by this choice, McCain alienates those who were (surprise!) already alienated by him and the Republican party and gains points with his core constituency and a large group of undecided voters.

So:  What about Sarah?

My email box had a few emails from friends and relatives asking me what we think of her.

She’s pro-life/anti-abortion: She walks the walk, doesn’t just talk the talk. The Palins knew early on that Trig was Down’s Syndrome, but the pregnancy was continued anyway.  There are those who get angered by this, because they’d say, “Don’t assume that everyone who learns they’re having a child with Down’s Syndrome will automatically abort!”.  That’s not my assumption.  My assumption is that there are a lot of folks who are “pro-life” who will claim that abortion is horrible under all circumstances, only to be faced with a similar circumstance and decide that, oh, well, it’s okay for me. 

Pro-Oil: Well, it’s Alaska. The entire state is pro-oil. 

Pro-Corporation (Anti-Environment):  She’s for opening up the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling.  She has pushed through a natural gas pipeline that was stalled for a long time.  She opposes putting polar bears on the endangered list, and thinks global climate change is a buncha hooey.

Family Values (Anti-Gay): Marriage should be between a man and a woman, period; abstinence-only sex-ed is the way to go, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Openly supported “teach the controversy” in science classes when it comes to science versus “intelligent design”.  Then waffled and said she meant when students bring it up.

Claimed to support “transparency” in government, but keeps hella lot of stuff under wraps when requested.  For instance, the governor’s office refused to release state scientists’ emails protesting the state’s official position about opposing putting polar bears on the “in danger” list because the emails were “preliminary” and “not relevant”.

After thinking about the whole “experience” thing, though at first I was worried about McCain dropping dead and her not having experience, it occurs to me that no-one has experience being the president of the United States, and it’s a learn-as-you-go job.  She seems to have done fairly well as governor of Alaska.

My conclusion:  I see a lot to admire in the woman, but her values are not my values. 

Last week, the news headlines were filled with Georgia.

“Russia invades Georgia!”

“Russia moves in as Georgia fights separatists”

“We are all Georgia!”

“Georgia Bigfoot found!”

Wait a minute!  What?!  How did that last one sneak in there?!

But there it was–two hunters claimed they had a real Bigfoot body in a freezer.  They were going to subject it to DNA tests.  They were going to Reveal All in a press conference.  They were working with “Mr. Bigfoot”, the guy who has spent something like 17 years of his life hunting the elusive Bigfoot and with the host of Squatchdetective radio, another Bigfoot enthusiast.

The news shot around the world!  It showed up on FOX news, and other news sources!  Everyone was excited!

(Okay, not everyone…)

Then the DNA tests showed a mix of human and possum DNA.  Oops.  The press conference was, shall we say, a bit of a letdown.

So then the big Bigfoot dudes decided to defrost the thing.

A frozen gorilla suit…

Bahaha!

There is something profoundly satisfying about being able to toss a small bomb at a living creature and feel righteous about it.  It gives me a teeny tiny glimmer of understanding about people who are willing to subsume themselves into hatred and prejudice; it’s visceral.

In other words:  I threw a firework at a pair of moose who were in the yard and felt a warm glow of achievement as these huge critters went barreling off through the woods.  Into one of our neighbors’ back yards.  Oh, well.  They’ve lived here a long time, surely they already have the moose thang sussed out, unlike us hapless Alaska newbies.

Aside from that, nothing is roiling my brain right now.  OmegaGranny sent me a link to a blog post about kids books and end-of-the-world catastrophism, prompted by a write-up in Newsweek.

Eh.

Frankly, the majority of stuff that kids read right now is so fluffy and frilly and substance-less that a few more meaty books here and there don’t bother me.  After all, we’ve got Barbie and Bratz and My Little Pony and CareBears and sweetness and light all over the place.  (Speaking of “sweetness and light”, have you seen JibJab’s take on the latest presidential campaign, in particular the very amusing part about Barack Obama?  And you should read their blog about pulling it all together, too.)

Good old-fashioned disaster lit just takes one back to an earlier, more gritty age, when Cinderella’s stepsisters cut off their toes and heels to try to fit into the glass slipper, and one princess’s evil stepmother was forced to dance at her wedding in iron-hot dancing shoes.  It’s not like catastrophe, disaster, vengeance, killing, and what-not is anything new.  Bambi’s mother, for instance, is shot.  And Disney movies are run through-and-through with dead or absent moms.

Anyway, if the disaster lit wasn’t written specifically for juveniles, you can be assured that the juveniles will just find grown-up disaster lit to read.  Or movies to watch.  Poseidon Adventure, anyone?  Towering Inferno?  On The Beach?  Godzilla?

I think that humans are hard-wired to want drama.  Humans against humans!  All against the backdrop of war! or disaster! You’ve got yer Ulysses.  You’ve got yer Beowulf.  You’ve got yer Bayeaux Tapestry, Don Quixote, Les Miserables, Gone With The Wind, The Day After Tomorrow…  Probably those ancient humans who did the cave paintings in Lescaux had their own version of the disaster/drama/horror story while sitting around fires and eating freshly slain bison.

Right now, my personal desire is for a rockin’, sockin’ disaster novel that ends up with the End Of All Moose, and the Flourishing Of All Veggie Gardens.  I’ll settle, however, for a few books that are due to show up in my mailbox within a week or so, good old-fashioned escapist fantasy and science fiction, replete with–of course–catastrophic end-of-the-world shenanigans…

(ETA:  Ack!  I forgot to mention Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog!  You must check it out within the next two days, before they make you pay for it!)

I have always admired the smooth, sleek elegance of French braids, but they intimidated me.  Surely something that looks so…classic…must be difficult to do.  So when I had long hair, I contented myself with (occasionally) doing regular braids, and merely wisted from afar at more snazzy dos.

Then the dotter arrived in our life.  For the first few years, her hair was too short.  Then, when it became longer, it was the central point of the Hair Drama, in which mere combing became torture for both of us.

Somewhere along the line, we both learned how to cope with the hair combing, and suddenly it was no longer torture.  And her hair was long.  New vistas of hair fiddling opened up before me, and I was able to rediscover basic braids, variations on ponytails, buns, and twists.

But still, French braids seemed an arcane art.  In her preschool, the dotter had one teacher who was adept at French braids, and she would occasionally arrive home with her hair sleeked into the lovely style.  I would admire and ooh and ahh, and secretly seethe with jealousy that Miss R. (who was young and cute and perky and beloved by the dotter) also had this feminine mystery down pat.

I tried once, following a how-to from the internet, and it looked clumsy and messy.  My plan was to keep practicing, but there was never time in the evenings–when an hour or so spent dealing with frustration would seem okay.  And then the dotter had the incident with the bubble gum, and her hair was shorn, and there was a hiatus on hair-fiddling.

But now her hair has grown out again, very suddenly seeming long enough to do things with.  We’ve been doing ponytails and basic braids again, and one of her camp counselors sent her home one day with a French braid.  So I decided this evening to try again.

As you can see, it’s not “smooth, sleek, and elegant”.  The part is ragged.  The hair joins are rumply and fumbled.

And her bangs, which she is determined to grow out, are every which way.

BUT…it’s a start.  She liked it, and wouldn’t let me take them out and re-do them.  Somewhere along the line, I suddenly realized how to grab the new hair without getting my fingers tangled up, and it became easier.  Once I get the finger movements down, then I can concentrate on making it smooth.  And then I can try a one-braid design.  Or two braids merging into one.

The dotter, by the way, was thoroughly engrossed in Hann@h M0ntana on YouTube, a rare treat.  We now have a movie of her dancing to “The Best of Both Worlds”, which, alas, is stuck on the other camera, because I can’t seem to find the proper USB cord, and can’t find the third camera to dump the memory chip into (we do have the proper USB cord for the other two cameras, but the second camera, which I have the cord to, uses the other kind of memory chip…wasn’t all of this supposed to be easy and plug-n-play?).

“Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.”

In the world of fantasy, magic is a mainstay.  Ya gots yer elves, dwarves, wizards, Deep Ancient Evils, warriors, nice nerdy dudes or dudettes who were just living their lives being sucked into a vortex of terror and history, yadda yadda yadda.  And laced through everything is magic.

On the whole–except for elven realms–the magic sets the magic-wielder apart, separates him or her from the mainstream of his culture.  Great power brings great responsibility.  Small power brings mischief.  The Joe Sixpacks of the fantasy worlds eye magicians and wizards askance, probably imbued with the feeling that, hey, if I had magic, I’d use to do give Glenna-down-the-street a whoppin’ case of warts and fleas…so surely–surely–Mr. High-And-Mighty Magician is gonna Do Me Wrong if given half a chance.

In most fantasies, magicians and wizards and suchlike are just plain born that way.  It’s a talent.  Like playing the piano.  Or making artwork.  Or being able to get on a podium and have 50,000 people chanting “Yes, we can!”  You’ve either got it, or you don’t, but if you’ve got it, you’ve got to train it.

These are the norms.

I’ve recently read two fantasies that explore the question of “what if the Price Of Magic were outrageously great?”, and the repercussions of the price.  One went the expected way:  the Price Of Magic is searingly tragic, forever exiling you from mortal humanity, turning you into a snobby elitist who regards mortals as something akin to mayflies.  The other went a totally different path:  Magic is a tool of…something (gods?)…that uses you, and you are physically transformed into something that makes you an object of scorn and pity in your native milieu.

Feast of Souls, by C.S. Friedman, is the first, and the first of the Magister Trilogy.  To work magic, you burn up your life force.  If you’re a nice person who has compassion for the world, you use up your life force and *boom* you die.  If you’re not a nice person, or you have an infinite hunger to keep living, you’ll start using other people’s life force.  (Not a spoiler, since the review on Amazon says this already.)  You become cold, aloof, willing to play with mortal’s lives, countries, history as if it were a toy to amuse you.  You can’t let anyone know what your source of power is, because they’d hunt you down and kill you like a…well…a serial killer.

But, really.  Yeah, yeah, it’s a mighty moral dilemma and all that, and C.S. Friedman does her usual amazing job at telling a bang-up story that grabs you and drags you along.  But, in all honesty:  it’s a price that lots of people would see as tragic but worthy.  You mean I could do magic forever, live forever, so long as I’m some sort of weird psychic vampire that never sees his victim?  Ya sure!  Okay, maybe it’s not as easy as all that, but it’s still monumental, tragic, and in a weird way, empowering.

Then you have the central premise of the Soldier Son Trilogy, by Robin Hobb, which is totally different.  First off, you don’t get to choose to be a magic wielder–the Magic chooses you.  And if you don’t do what It wants, It lays waste to your life, separating you from everything you love, pushing you into paths that It wants.  So first off, you lose your volition.  You don’t get to play around with the magic and become a mysterious, all-knowing figure that wanders the world, solving problems for mere mortals, providing solemn wizardly advice or sage wizardly protection to those who can afford your fees.

If that weren’t bad enough, it makes you fat.  Not a little bit.  A lot.  Because the Magic requires a lot of fuel.  And you find yourself loving food, glorying in the sensuous textures, frantic for food.  But in your world (just like in ours), it’s quite socially acceptable–in fact, almost required–to be scornful of those who are fat, judging them as wastrels, gourmands, gluttons, lazy folk who aren’t willing to take the time and effort and responsibility to keep themselves in trim condition.

We’re talking being the butt of everyone’s jokes, scorned, harassed by your family, dumped by your fiance, outcast, seen as an ineffectual fool by the world at large–all the while you’re coming to grips with being yanked away from your life.

This approach is not seen as tragic but worthy.  In fact, the reviews of the Soldier Son Trilogy are pretty dismal, which I found an interesting reflection of our culture.  My supposition is that not only do the characters in the book find the fat hero worthy of scorn, but so do the readers.

It is a slow series.  There are no “right” people, no “wrong” people.  There’s a clash of cultures, neither of which is wholly admirable (it is a twist on the European colonists marching across the Americas and driving away or killing or assimilating the natives).  The hero is–understandably–pretty obsessive about the whole thing and frequently wildly depressed, because he, too, considers being outrageously fat as being worth less.

I’m eagerly waiting for the second book of Friedman’s trilogy (I love her writing), and waiting–almost grimly–for the third Soldier Son book to come out in paperback.  I just thought it was interesting how they approached the question of paying for the power in such wildly different ways.

(As an aside, it makes me wonder why the idea that “magic has a price” is so ingrained in our culture, and, so far as I can tell, in others as well.)

“There was a farmer who was a weak man.  His wife was very rich.  They bought a farm and they named it ‘Harry Butt’.  A few years later, they had a son who they named Crack.  One day the farmer couldn’t find his son, and he called the police, and he said, ‘Hello?  911?  I’ve looked all over my Harry Butt and I can’t find my Crack!’”

At which point, the dotter busts up laughing like crazy.  For a few minutes, she can’t speak, she’s so giggly.  And I get giggly just listening to her giggle.

A joke.  A real life (old and hoary) (and somewhat discombobulated) joke.

Then there’s:

“I know a song that gets on everybody’s nerves,
Everybody’s nerves,
Everybody’s nerves.
I know a song that gets on everybody’s nerves,
And this is how it goes:

I know a song that gets on everybody’s nerves…”

Which goes on and on and the musical theme never resolves and it’s like fingernails on chalkboard, all of which amuses the dotter to no end.

Then there’s:

“Did you know that the man who is the president made us get into a war?  And there wasn’t really a reason?  And people died?”  (This led to a quick recap of 9-11, thousands of people dying, Afghanistan, Iraq ["A rock?  Why'd we take a rock to war?"], why people would do such a thing, and presidents that systematically gut constitutional checks and balances, all in terms a six-year-old would understand.)  “I don’t think he’s a very nice president.”

(I have to admit I was extremely surprised that she got this version of GWB, especially hereabouts.  I would have assumed that GWB would be portrayed as heroic.  It was interesting.)

Then there’s hopscotch, jumprope, four-square, a wild variety of clapping games that have variants I don’t know but that I’m learning as quickly as I can, dissecting owl pellets (”Did you know that owl pellets are owl vomit?!  Ewwwww!  But I found a whole jaw bone!”), gold rush stories, mosquito bites galore, learning to shoot a bow and arrow, and the latest crush, a boy named C., though Mr. Zane, one of the 18-year-old camp counselors, is almost as good as C.

The scientific method, that is.  Theories?  We don’t need no steenkin’ theories, man!  Hypotheses?  Pish-tush!  Soooo 20th century!  Experimentation?  Observation?  Oh, puh-leeze!  Who needs that stuff?  ‘Cause we’ve got data.

Gigabytes of data.  Terrabytes of data.  Petabytes.  Hexadeca-bytes.  Google-bytes, even!  (But not Google™ type bytes.)  Infini-bytes!  We have data pouring out our ears these days, thanks to the Intertubes, and so Wired Magazine has declared The End Of The Scientific Method.

‘Cause, y’see, we can take all that data, put it in a big Magic Data Mangler, shake it, stir it, decant it, and ta-da!  New science!  All these nifty correlations will spill out, neat science-y goodness just spread in front of us like a field of diamonds, sparkling and glittering and making us gasp at the magic of it all.  Kozmik All knows it’s much easier to do that than to, say, oh…think.  Who needs to look at the world and wonder "why?" or "how?" or "what would happen if we did x?"

I’m sure OmegaBro will be glad to know he doesn’t need to go traipsing off to all his field sites any more.  Why bother to investigate what happens to sawfly galls on southwestern stream willows in flood years versus in dry years?  Why spend your time counting galls on specific trees at specific sites each year?  I’m sure that information is out there in the interwebs cloud, just floating around, waiting for dear OmegaBro to write the proper program to collect it, stir, shake, and spill, and voila, he will have his community ecology interactions down to a "T".

Of course, there’s that silly little thing like, oh, deciding what to mine from the vast cloud of info out there.  And why.

As someone commented on the essay, "garbage in, garbage out"–that grand old saying about computers and data–applies here.  Given how infested the web is with spam and commercialism and outright crankery, using the "just grab all the data out there and whirl it around in some big-ass computers" approach might deposit a lovely fewmet of, say, colonics cleansing being effective at removing years-old parasites from poor haggard human bodies.  Or someone might use it to prove that Indigo Children really are an increasing influence on world politics today.

Lots of other folks have said it, but I’ll say it, too:  Theory is not dead.  The scientific method is not passe.  The Wired essay is waving its hand at statistical correlation being science, all gee-gosh-golly-wow charts-n-graphs.  But that’s not science.  It’s cool, yes, I’ll grant that.  And lots of interesting information is coming out of the expanding ability to correlate disparate groups of data and seeing what patterns emerge.  But science is asking "why?", trying to figure out the natural world, trying to understand underlying laws that drive the universe, delving into genetics and fossils and tokamaks and outer space and multi-dimensional math and gravity and thermonuclear processes that make stars burn bright…

All that kind of stuff.

Y’see, the information mining that Wired is going gaga over has–as its very basis–human beings who explored the world and teased out important basics based on theories, based on thousands of years of human beings asking questions, posing hypotheses, testing them out, deciding what works and what doesn’t, and why it works that way and not another, and how to harness the way it works to make life easier (or more complex) for humanity.  And it requires humans asking "why?" and wanting to know the answer to even decide to make the Magic Data Manglers look at one particular set of data in particular, before the MDM spills out its oh-so-pretty correlations.

So I have to say, the scientific method–theory, hypotheses, testing, experimentation, revision–is not dead yet; it’s not the red-shirted Away-Team member who always bites the dust in any Star Trek episode.

Yeehaw.  We now have a black candidate for president, the first time in mainstream political party history.

No, really, I am pleased.  But I personally would have been pleased with Hillary, too, and she would have made history as well, being the first female candidate for president for a mainstream political party.

(We’ve had both in offshoot parties before.)

And now we have pissed off Dems saying they would rather vote for McCain than Barack Hussein Obama.

I’m left wondering why.

Why would someone who voted for Hillary Clinton prefer John McCain over Barack Obama?

There’s a bunch of folks who just plain dislike Obama, especially since he didn’t stop at the word "bitter", but went on.  As a result, people didn’t look at why he thought they were bitter–being ignored by politicians for three decades–they only got huffy about being seen as religious, gun-toting bubbas.  Which totally wasn’t the point, but, hey, they don’t like him now, consider him a condescending elitist, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

Of course, there’s the strategic reason:  McCain wins, gets stuck with the mess left behind by BushCo, ends up with a one-term lame-duck presidency, and Hillary Clinton sweeps in on her white horse to save the day.

Okay.  That’s a valid strategy.  But it ignores some serious things, in my point of view.

It ignores the Supreme Court, for one thing.  McCain, being Bush Light, may not pack as many strict conservative justices in as Bush Regular would…but they’ll still be leaning on the conservative side.

It ignores his stated intention to continue the war in Iraq.

It ignores McCain’s health insurance plan, which is to do to health insurance companies what was done to credit card companies and banks in the 80s and 90s…loosening regulations in order to encourage competition.  Hey!  Look what that’s gotten us now!  Usurious credit card rates, fifty kazillion people being offered credit who shouldn’t have been, a bubble in real estate prices as a result, and the ensuing crash.  Yeah, I’d really like to see that applied to health insurance…

It ignores the fact that McCain is anti-choice, whereas both Hillary and Barack have been unrelentingly pro-choice.

I have a personal beef against McCain, which is something that lost him my respect back a few campaigns ago…when the Bush campaigners did a whispering campaign against him that insinuated that his adopted daughter Bridget, from Bangladesh, was an illegitimate bastard black child.  What did McCain do?  He did nothing.  And after his campaign was over, what did he do?  He cozied up to the Bush regime.  Pah.  So much for Mr. Maverick.  I would have voted for him eight years ago…but there is no way I can do it now.

One of the most interesting things I have read in a long time was an interview where someone was asking Obama what his first acts would be in the White House.  Obama said he would collect all the Executive Orders signed by the Bush administration and review them for constitutionality.

Woot.  I say, woot!

In the end, though, I am not hopeful.  I think whoever wins this election is going to be a one-hit wonder.  Why?  Because whoever wins will be stuck fixing the mess that BushCo has left us.  A grinding economic mess.  A grinding military mess.  And no matter what actions are taken to fix those messes, people aren’t going to like them, one little bit, and when the next election rolls around, they’re going to toss whoever it is out on his ear.

In the meantime, and totally off-topic, but perhaps explaining my sour mood:  I hate mosquitoes with a fiery passion.  The problem is that they like me.  Nom nom nom, is what they say when they scent me and home in on my skin.  We have an industrial strength mosquito herd out by the area where The Grand Coop is being built.  I go out and help OmegaDad measure and cut and screw, and the mosquitoes are chowing down on me like I’m food from a fancy, expensive caterer being dished up for free.

We did not have mosquitoes in Small Mountain University Town.

You invited the dotter to your daughter’s birthday party.

The party was in Big City at the science museum.

WAY kewl!

Um.

But.

Um.

That’s a fifty mile drive.  One way.  It takes an hour to drive.  One way.

Sorry, we’re not going.

(Does it strike anyone else as a wee tad overboard to be having your six-year-old’s birthday party at a big science museum that is an hour’s drive away?)

The newsies are agog at the notion that Miley Cyrus has (gasp!) revealed herself (gasp!) in a truly artsy pic by Annie Leibowitz, and by (gasp!) a picture of her lounging against her boyfriend that (gasp!) shows her midriff (o the shock, o the horror!).  Stories are written saying that she is setting foot on the primrose path to ruin that has been taken by other teen stars lately–specifically Britney and her ilk.

Our culture is totally schizophrenic.  On the one hand, we’re practically drowning in pictures and videos of scantily clad females doing all sorts of things that one might expect scantily clad–or unclad–females to be doing.  Licentiousness abounds.  On the other, a 15-year-old has a few pics taken and suddenly Moms Of Pop Culture Unite to prostrate themselves upon their chaises longues, hands to their foreheads, having the vapors that the Queen of Pre-Teen Clean is allowing herself to be defiled.  The hordes of teeny tweeny Hannah Montana fans are suddenly going to transform into an army of mini-Lolitas, and it’s All Miley’s Fault.  Prudery rears its ugly head.

OmegaMom is rolling her eyes here, big time.

OmegaMom is also rolling her eyes at an article about "When Young Teachers Go Wild On The Web".

Kozmik All help us:  22-year-old teachers have MySpace pages.  And they…and they…omigawd, how can my trembling fingers write this??  They have pictures on those pages!  Pictures of (gasp!) themselves holding (gasp!) bottles of tequila!  Or, even worse, paintings they have done showing women’s lingerie peeping out from under upflung skirts.  Or (shudder!) paintings of frontal nudes!

(One does wonder if those paintings were anything like these…)

And they say things!  Like "rocking out with some deaf kids.  It.  Is.  Awesome." 

Or talking about bl0w j0bs.

Or showing posters about cartoon sperm.

What is wrong with these teachers?!  Have they no decorum?!  No reserve?!  Aren’t they aware they are molding young children’s minds?!  How dare they have lives of their own!  How dare they have thoughts of their own!

Now, granted, each and every one of the things mentioned above could be taken too far.  Let’s not show pictures of orgies featuring oneself in the buff.  But in and of themselves, my opinion about the examples in the article is…well…um…hell, these are 20-something teachers.

I was party-hearty girl until I reached my early 30s.  Well, not as "hearty" as some, but I went out, I drank, I partied, I danced, I stayed up all weekend long, I had hangovers, I talked sex with all my buds, I toked joints, I had sex, I listened to rock-n-roll.  And if the web and blogs had been around then, I’d probably have blogged about all of the above.

It might have been drearily boring.  I have to admit that my overwhelming response to most blogs or MySpace pages put out by folks in their late teens and early 20s is that they are an appallingly vacuous, inane collection of stream of consciousness gossip, in conjunction with angsty poetry.  This is why, when I use the "next blog" button on Blogger, I go through about fifty blogs before I find something I would consider even vaguely interesting.

I can’t imagine Mrs. Shoetree, the dotter’s kindergarten teacher, having a webpage with a poster about cartoon sperm, or paintings of frontal nudes, or talking about "rocking out" with anyone; she is, after all, older than me, and more staid.  But if she did I wouldn’t care, because she’s a damn fine kindy teacher who my dotter adores.  Which is, after all this bloviating, my main point:  Folks, teachers have Real Lives.  Yes!  I know it’s a surprise, but, hey, there it is, and it’s my pleasure to pass this piece of arcane knowledge on to you.  Teachers are Real, Live Human Beings who, amazingly enough, have been known to go to parties, or fall in love, or be indiscreet.

In a refreshing departure from administrative powerhunger, some administrator actually said that webpages should be handled case by case.  (What, no standardized testing?!)  On the other hand, another administrator type had this to say:  "We all understand the importance of living a public life above reproach…"

Dear lord.  We are doomed; the only people who will go into teaching or politics twenty years from now are people who are upright, humorless prigs…

When I was growing up, there was a saying:  "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me."

Of course, kids still called names, and it still hurt, but having that said often enough sort of conditioned one to think that being called names was an ephemeral thing.

Then there was the "turn the other cheek" philosophy, in which, if you were hurt, rather than hitting back, you offered a further target.  Sort of pre-Gandhi-ism.

So what’s changed?  What makes a nice middle-class mom decide to fake an online personality to gain friendship with a depressive teen, then yank the "friendship" away, all as a way of "teaching a lesson" or some such thing to a girl who had "hurt" her daughter–resulting in the teen’s suicide?  What makes fresh-faced cheerleader gals decide that a previous buddy’s namecalling on MySpace warrants a half-hour long smackdown to be posted on YouTube?  What makes the mother of one of the beaters go onto national television and say–in all seriousness–"This is all blown out of proportion"?

Of course, these incidents have caused folks to come out of the woodwork to blame the Internet.  It’s MySpace’s fault!  It’s YouTube’s fault!  My girl wouldn’t have done anything like that if the eeeevul Internet wasn’t there!  Or, I wouldn’t have done anything like that if the eeevul Internet hadn’t made me do it.

Seriously.  In these cases, the parents seem to have something missing.  Us old-fashioned folk would call it "conscience", I guess.  Or morals.  Or a sense of proportion.  Or something.  What happened to saying something like, "If that girl is trash-talking you, surely you don’t want to associate with her?"? 

Currently, the dotter is deep in the midst of the standard "If you don’t do x for me, I won’t be your friend anymore!" pronouncement phase.  I give her the hairy eyeball at such statements to me, until she breaks down into a grin and giggles.  She knows that saying those things doesn’t cut it with me.  And I’ve had to intervene once or twice at after-school care when one or another of the girls says something like that as well.

The idea being that it’s not what someone else thinks of you that’s important:  It’s what you think of yourself.  It’s knowing you’ve done the right thing.  It’s knowing when you’ve done the wrong thing.  It’s realizing that some of these great dramas won’t mean a damned thing when you’re forty years old.

These internalizations don’t spontaneously emerge, of course.  You have to work on them.  And it’s not faux self-esteem B.S. that we’re talking about here–the "I am Special" entitled attitude.  It’s the feeling that you’ve worked hard on something, tried your best, done the right thing, have stuff inside you that is worthwhile…

These girls–and their parents–seem to have missed the boat on all of this.  The jockeying for prestige and station becomes the be-all and end-all of their existence.  They’re judging their own worth by what other people say, in the heat of the moment, either to their friends or on MySpace.  Now, I realize that names hurt.  They sting.  You can, indeed, end up crying in the middle of the night over what one of your acquaintances said behind your back.  And it continues even when you’re forty-something.

But the thing to do is move on, concentrate on what’s good and going well in your life.  Not beat the shit out of your former best friend so you can toss it up on YouTube and get lots of comments.

Every once in a while, I haul the dotter off to Veronica’s, the local manicure-in-a-mall, for an hour of frou-frou girly-girl stuff.  The last time we were there, Veronica carefully painted an itty-bitty snowman on one fingernail, and an itty-bitty Christmas tree on one of the fingernails on the other hand.  The dotter gets pink or purple, usually with glitter, while I get clear nail polish.

It’s a pleasant little interlude.  Veronica does a much better job with fingernails than I do, the dotter gets her glittery pink or purple, I get my jagged edges filed smooth, and then the dotter begs a quarter off me so she can ride the horsie in the mall lobby.

All pretty laid-back.

I am obviously far behind the times, though.

I should be getting her a bikini wax.  Or her eyebrows plucked.  Or, if I were really thinking ahead, a botox job.

What’s that you say?  She’s only six?

No, no, no!  You don’t understand!  These days, it’s the "in" thing to do!  Mommy-daughter bonding time at the spa and salon!  Mommy goes in one door to get a bikini wax and daughter goes into the other to get her eyebrows shaped.

Now normally I’d pooh-pooh such a story, putting it down to a reporter who sees something twice and then turns it into a "trend".  But in this case, the author asked a whole slew of salon owners, and got a quote from a pediatrician; besides that, there was a remarkably similar story in the New York Times just a few days ago.

I recall a slightly bewildering Christmas visit to the in-laws, when our niece L., who the previous year had been quite happy hiking and scrambling over rocks with us, a lovely, natural beauty at 15, spent an hour and a half in the bathroom before emerging as a sleek, made-up model-type to go to the mall with her boyfriend.

I also recall a time when I had to chase three girls out of my great-aunt’s bathroom as they had monopolized it for far too long in preparation for a family gathering at the local buffet restaurant.  They emerged with Big Hair (this was, after all, the mid- to late-’80s), a cloud of perfume puffing out of the bathroom door, with big blue racoon eyes.

Somewhere between my own total lack of primping and grooming, and these ladies hauling their children off for buffing and plucking and botoxing, there’s a happy medium.

What happened to that happy medium?

On the one hand, I seriously consider taking the dotter, at age 13 or 14, to the local Clinique counter a few times to have instruction on how to do make-up without looking "made up".  I think of doing a nail-painting party for a bunch of ten-year-olds (thank heavens that’s a few years off!).  I personally indulge in massages now and then.  But all of these are "treats" in my mind, not something that gets done on a regular basis.

I dunno.  Mainly, I’m an old fart with a semi-hippy outlook and a worry that the dotter will be sucked into a pop-culture outlook that places emphasis on the outer wrappings, rather than the inner character.

From birth to death, one is ever-learning, ever-growing. The collection of serendipity we call "the Internet" and "blogs" helps with this process–sometimes in a way that is, frankly, shallow, silly, a bit of mental fluff and floss, and sometimes in a way that makes you stop and go, "Whoa. I didn’t know that."

While OmegaDad was out of town, I indulged myself with a few-hour binge on YouTube watching ’80s music videos. I did Tom Petty. Queensryche. Bon Jovi. Joe Satriani. Dire Straits. Van Halen. Pat Benetar. The Clash. John (Cougar) Mellencamp. Midnight Oil. U2. I did a whole slew of U2, including a live performance of Sunday, Bloody Sunday from "Rattle and Hum", which I’m sure most of my older readers have seen, but I haven’t:

Then, today, I wandered over to Whatever, and encountered this version of U2’s Pride (In the Name of Love):

And I thought to myself, "Wow! What a great way to use U2’s song!"

And then I did a little googling, and discovered I must be the oldest person on earth to finally realize that U2 wrote that song as a tribute to Martin Luther King. Um. Yes, somehow I managed to get through the ’80s rockin’ out to U2 and never really listened to the words or learned that little fact.

So: Ever-learning, ever-changing, ever-growing. That is OmegaMom.

Today is the anniversary of the assassination of MLK. I was old enough that I should remember it, but don’t. We didn’t watch much news, and I spent my time with the TV watching Star Trek and Twilight Zone and Dark Shadows, with a hand grasping the antenna (because that was the only way we really got a good signal).

Children who are growing up these days simply won’t have any concept of what it was like back then. (Actually, I don’t really have any concept, either, because I was so young and still focused on the family, not the outer world.)

Oh, yes, there’s still prejudice. There’s still racism. But it wasn’t that long ago that "separate but equal" was codified in U.S. laws, that whites marrying blacks was illegal in many states, that desegregating busing led to the need to call out the National Guard to escort little children to school doors in the face of adult hatred. It was only 40 years ago that James Earl Ray shot the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. out of fear and hatred, fear of a man who said, "I dream that my children will be judged by the content of their characters and not the color of their skin."

But today…today we have a black man running for President of the United States, with polls showing him ahead of a white male Republican opponent.

In the name of love, let us all move forward.

(Gah.  My apologies to those who see this in their RSS feeds multiple times–I’m trying to center the videos, and it keeps messing up.  So I give up.)

We’ve all encountered those questions.  They’re in the pseudo-IQ-tests you can find online; they’re definitely in my dotter’s homework now and then.  You’re supposed to look at a group of items and find the one that "doesn’t fit".

So, with that in mind, here are real headlines from MSNBC’s Business section today.  That’s one day.  I’m not going to link them all, just send you to the Business main page:

"Automakers see sales fall during March" - GM sales down 19% year-over-year, Ford down 14%, Toyota down 10%, Nissan and Honda sales down, too.

"Truckers protest high fuel prices" - Remember the song "Convoy"?  (Yes, I’m dating myself here, that’s a big 10-4!)  NJ truckers formed a convoy to protest high diesel prices.  Diesel is going for $3.99 per gallon at our local gas stations.

"European banks see $23 billion subprime hit" - UBS Bank (Switzerland) expects $19 billion in write-downs, Deutsche Bank to write-down an additional $4 billion.  Since January 2007, banks have seen write-downs or credit losses off $232 billion; that’s a lot!

"Construction spending falls again in Feb." - Residential construction spending has dropped for 24 months straight.  Recent news indicates that commercial construction spending is starting to turn down, too.

"Manufacturing activity contracted in March" - An index of manufacturer economic activity was at 46.5 for March (above 50 means growth, below 50 means no growth).

"Just how bad can the economy get?" - Worried readers ask questions of the business desk folk at MSNBC.  The response?  "First off, we have yet to see confirmation that the economy has entered even a mild recession, let alone a severe downturn."

"Auto industry workers face hard choices" - Chrysler, GM, and Ford have recently announced cutbacks and closures.  How is this affecting auto industry workers?

"Food price hikes changing eating habits" - The average price of a loaf of bread has increased 32% over the past three years.  Eggs have gone up 50% over the past year.  People are making fewer trips to the stores, eating out less, cutting coupons more.

"New home sales fall to a 13-year low in Feb." - Sales dropped to an annual rate of 590,000 units, with inventory of new houses at the highest level in 26 years.

"Some homes worth less than their pipes" - People are breaking into empty foreclosed houses to rip out the copper plumbing and electric wiring.  The headline, of course, is a bit off; they’re talking houses in some really really rundown areas of rundown cities.

"Analysts see 200,000 banking industry layoffs" - More layoffs are inevitable, say banking industry pundits.

"Wall Street soars amid economic optimism" - "Wall Street began the second quarter with a big rally Tuesday as investors rushed back into stocks, optimistic that the worst of the credit crisis has passed and that the economy is faring better than expected. The Dow Jones industrials surged nearly 400 points, and all the major indexes were up more than 3 percent."  Another news source calls it the best first-quarter end for the DJIA since 1938.

I called the borough.  I talked to Jane, a nice lady who informed me "it happens all the time, don’t worry."

Look, okay, when I get something that has in big red letters "TAX DELINQUINCY NOTICE" and the word "foreclosure" on it, I get kind of hot and bothered.

But Jane said not to worry and to talk to my mortgage company.

Which was, of course, my next step.

I will not go off on a rant about outsourcing to India.  I will not.

Ahem.

Jarmesh was very polite.  Once we had communicated all the particulars, he said that everything would be taken care of.

So…Now that I know where the info is, I will be watching the escrow balance like a hawk.

In the end, I am left feeling very anticlimactic.  I hyperventilate and panic–the borough and the mortgage company act like it’s no big deal.  It damned well better be no big deal, is all I can say!

In the meantime, I leave you with the physics behind why peeling old wallpaper is a bitch (someone went to the trouble of a study to point out that peeling things slooooowly really helps a lot?!), and with Big Dog Beta, humanity’s answer to the Big Dog robot.

(No, not about taxes!)

Most of the time, I go through life thinking most people are pretty nice, that everyone (generally) just wants to get along, that the folks who get a kick out of hurting other people are few and far between.  That hackers are only interested in scoring, via macho skillz, or making money by scamming or thievery, but not interested in hurting other people.

Then I read something like this.

Hackers and spammers and what-not are branching out, it seems.  Not content with stealing people’s credit card numbers or identification, or posting 279 spam comments on an obscure blog per day for a week, they’ve now decided to target epilepsy patients, with something that hurts them.

An epilepsy support board was hacked by folks who put javascript in place to either display a seizure-inducing picture or redirect the post-reader to another website entirely that displayed a full-screen video of seizure-inducing patterns.

What kind of sick fucks would do something like that?!

I mean, really.  I can get "revenge".  I can get "personal animosity" aimed at one person.  I can get graffiti.  I can get theft.  But I can’t get the kind of personality that impersonally poisons an online medical support group with something that can actually physically incapacitate or hurt someone.  My considered opinion:  These are scum-sucking slimeball pigs with the morals of a hyena, like roaches of the internet, who should be squashed like the bugs they are.

Bastards.

A recent Disney film is now available on DVD.  So, since we’ve instituted "family movie night", wherein we watch a movie together and eat dinner in the family room, and since it’s a Disney movie, a fairy tale, we figured we’d get it and watch it and have a pleasant evening.

It’s a fun movie!  Really!  See, there’s this princess locked away by a prince’s evil stepmother, who’s very Snow-White-esque, singing to all the birds and animals and daydreaming of her handsome prince.  The prince hears her singing…he searches out the beauteous voice…he finds the princess…she’s swept off her feet…

And then the evil stepmother, trying to keep her away from the prince, dumps her into a wishing well that has, as it’s other end, New York City.

At which point, the movie turns from a cartoon into real life.

All well and good.  Lots of hilarity ensues when this dewy-eyed innocent Disney princess tries to cope with real-life NYC.

She meets a man.  She starts falling for the man.  The prince and a henchman of the stepmother also go through the wishing well to rescue her/keep the prince from rescuing her…

And then the evil stepmother, deciding her henchman is worthless, jumps into NYC herself.

At which point, the dotter crawled up into my lap.

And then the witch, foiled in various connivings, busts loose with lots of flames and witchery and turns into a very well-done CGI dragon lizard thing, big and scaly and scary.

"Scary" being the operative word.

Really scary for a six-year-old who has only encountered scary stuff in The Wizard of Oz (which is banned from the house for a few years) and in cartoons.  She’s quite the adept at the scary stuff in cartoons, because she’s well aware that it’s Not Real.  But CGI that’s presented in a realistic way?

Really, really scary.

I spent quite a bit of time last night in the dotter’s bedroom before she fell asleep, having to explain how it was all Make Believe.  How it was all done with computers.  How it wasn’t a real dragon lizard thing, and the witch wasn’t a real witch, and it wasn’t real fire, and it was all pretend, and everything was okay.

I felt blindsided, frankly.  I didn’t even think to research the movie beforehand–after all, it’s Disney, fer cryin’ out loud!  A Disney children’s movie.

So:  Make sure your kiddos aren’t quite as innocent about scary special effects as mine was before you show it to them.

One of the Great Truths about me is that I never mastered Big Hair.  The only time I came close was when I had my poodle perm (see this post).  My hair has always been, and always will be, fine, straight, thin, silky hair that loses any hint of a curl when the relative humidity goes past 20%.  Since I grew up in Chicago, and lived there during the majority of the ’80s, perms were the only path to curldom.

Then there was the fact that, if one really wanted it, one could get Big Hair by spending inordinate amounts of time in the bathroom, fiddling with curlers, curling irons, hair spray, and teasing.  I had more important things to do, such as read.  Or write.

Anyway, I muddled through the ’80s as best I could.

Another Great Truth:  the dotter, though totally genetically unrelated to me, has that same hair:  fine, straight, thin, silky.

So last night, as you know, I subjected the dotter to soft curlers all over her head.

Of course, some came out during the night.

But!  The rest stayed in, and when they were unrolled, her hair was quite bouncy and curly.

I combed.  I sprayed.  I curling-ironed her bangs.  I didn’t do any hair-teasing because I am morally against such things.  So here’s our ’80s cowgirl, looking sassy (i.e., making a face):

It actually was big!  Here’s a close-up (the color is off and I couldn’t figure out how to correct it):

In which you can immediately tell that the bang curls didn’t do what they’re supposed to, and you can see some straight hairs that escaped the entire curler fiasco.

But the sad thing is that the dotter’s hair, like mine, immediately began to go flat.  Obviously, even though I applied what I thought was a dreadful amount of hair spray, lifting locks and spraying under them, holding them up so they’d dry a bit fluffy, it was all for naught.  By the time I haul her off to gymnastics this afternoon, the curls will be a sad, sorry shadow of themselves.  All that will be left is sticky residue.

Sigh.

The good news is that she will not be subjected to an entire decade of trying to do this every morning.

There were no shoulder pads (how could I forget shoulder pads?!  But I did!).  There were, however, jean legs tucked into the boots, and a hair pick in the back pocket.

Gazing back into those misty, halcyon days of college, I dimly seem to remember something called "study groups".  At the beginning of the semester (or quarter), you’d collect names and phone numbers of other folks in your class who were interested in studying together, then you’d set a time, and someone would be tagged as the person to glom onto the first good study room or carrel at the university library.  You’d meet, everyone would have their textbooks and class notes, someone would bring noshes, and you’d spend a few hours going over the notes and exchanging answers and ideas about the homework.

"Y’know, I tried number 48, but I kept getting hung up!  Did anyone figure that problem out?!"

In my Numeric Analysis class (one of my favorites, really!), our prof gave us take-home tests for the mid-term and final.  He fully expected us to work in groups.  They were some of the hardest–and most fun–exams I had in my college experience.  Our study group met for hours in the library, in the break room in the basement of the math building, out on the lawns.  We worked hard.  We worked our butts off.  We thought deeply.  My mid-term response was 20 pages long; my final response was 30 pages.

We also had classes where it was probably assumed by the professor that we were working alone on homework and studying.  But even in those cases, hammering out the answers to more difficult problems with other students helped all of us understand the basic concepts better.  And those who got answers easily explained to those who didn’t, and gained from that aspect as well.

These days, it seems, such study groups often convene on the intertubes.  Specifically, at places such as Facebook.

One professor at Ryerson University, who apparently had a requirement that students were to work on assignments alone, discovered that a student had set up a Facebook study group for his class.  That student is facing expulsion and 147 counts of academic misconduct, one for each member of the study group.  His B grade was changed to an F by his professor after the Facebook group was discovered.

So many different ways of looking at this.

The professor didn’t want students working out answers to problems together. 

If that is the sole issue here, why weren’t all the other members of the study group equally penalized?  Why didn’t every student who was a member of the online group have his or her grades reduced/revoked?

As I understand it, each student was assigned different questions; since they were all different, was requesting help cheating?  Is the requirement to work on homework assignments alone a good requirement or a bad one?  Do students learn better by sweating through the problems on their own, or by helping each other find ways to reach the solution?

Different students respond in different ways to different approaches.  Some students do not like to work in groups at all.  Some students like to work in groups for some classes, but not others.  Some students work in groups all the time.  Some students work in groups to get off easily–but how does that help them when it’s time to take a test?  Some students who work in groups learn that they do all the work and others take the credit.  Some students learn better through reading, some through working through problems on their own, some through discussing, some through teaching others.

Questions of pedagogical approach aside, there are those who think that in this case it’s an open-and-shut case of cheating.  Others say that no-one posted specific answers to any problems and that mostly it was an ongoing session of tips and tricks on how to approach the problems. 

One blogger said that someone knowing they were getting the wrong answer indicates that they were cheating, because otherwise how would they know the answer was wrong?  Well, hell, I could always tell when I was getting the answer wrong–because nothing would check out when I worked the problem backwards.  Or else it just "felt" wrong.

I don’t know.  I think requiring college/university students to work alone on homework assignments is not the best approach; I think that by that age the student knows whether s/he wants to collaborate or work alone.  I also feel that the students who are actually getting specific answers from others without doing any of the work are cheating mostly themselves.  They’re the ones who will end up doing poorly on quizzes and tests.  They’re the ones who won’t be able to do the basic work when they get into a more advanced course.  They’re the ones who will constantly be scrambling to keep up or cover up as they move into the workforce.

What say you?

For a very spirited discussion on this subject, from both sides, check out The So-Called Facebook Scandal at A Blog Around The Clock.

Here in Alaska, as many people know, we have an overload of daylight hours in the summer.  We’re talking 19.14 hours of daylight at the peak where the Omega Family lives, and more up north.

That’s a lot of daylight.

Our kids don’t need to work on the crops quickly after school to get them in before the sun goes down.

So why do we have Daylight Savings Time here?

I mean, really…why bother?  In the summer, our "noon" ends up being at 2 p.m. or thereabouts, an artifact of when Alaska managed to get itself all in one time zone (except for the further reaches of the Aleutian Islands) so that the state managers in Juneau could talk to various state folk in Anchorage and other places without having to worry about time zones.  Previously, we were in four time zones. 

So why didn’t they just get rid of DST at the same time?  I don’t know, but apparently there’s a move afoot to get it on a ballot this year, though some folks grumble that Alaska will then be up to five hours off the eastern part of the U.S. during the summer.

This morning, upon waking, I stumbled through the house re-setting clocks.  OmegaDad and I are going to hang drapes today; it’s necessary because now the dotter will be going to bed while it’s still somewhat light outside.  Soon the same will be happening for OmegaDad and me–we’re gaining almost six minutes of light per day.  I can sleep in any environment, but OmegaDad can’t get to sleep if it’s light in the bedroom…

Mainly, DST is a big bother for us and the other 670,000 people who live here.

I like my blog.  It’s a nice, cozy place, where I get to rant and rave and philosophize about whatever I want, and inflict pictures of my darling dotter or other members of the family on The Public.  It skeeves me out that blog scrapers come by on a regular basis, grab a paragraph and a link, and then slap it up on a blog-ad-site (blad?) filled with AdSense ads, but it’s certainly better than folks who grab your entire blog, change some details, and publish it as their own (I’ve encountered this a few times, second- or third-hand).  It bothers me that there are people out there who will steal your pictures of your life, your child, and pretend the pictures are their own, illustrating their own life.

I can actually sort of understand it, though.  There are people out there who yearn after validation, who want to be seen as creative, as kind, as loving, as beautiful–whatever image it is that they are seeking, and stealing, they’ve got a serious self-image problem.  While I think plagiarizing like that sucks dead toads and should be the object of scorn and contumely, I also feel sorry for these folks.

But what the hell possesses people to start up an email with a lie?  You don’t know ahead of time that your email is going to go viral…

OmegaGranny recently sent me a forwarded email.  There were two lines of text, and 26 photos.  The text read: 

Entries for an art contest at the Hirshorn Modern Art Gallery in DC

The rule was that the artist could use only one sheet of paper.

The photos–the photos were awe-inspiring.  Fascinating.  Lovely.  Amazing.  Beautiful.  Quirky.  Sad.  Thought-provoking.

The photos were also very familiar to me.  I was dubious that these were the work of multiple people, because I could swear I had seen these very same pieces of artwork on one person’s website.  But I wasn’t sure.

So first I went off to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.  I couldn’t find anything that related to an "art contest".  I did an advanced Google search of the entire website, and didn’t find anything.

I went to Snopes, just to see if they had anything listed.  Nope. 

So then I googled "paper art".  Because I was sure I had seen these pictures before.

And lo and behold, the very first link that shows up when you google "paper art" is the site of Peter Callesen, a Scandinavian artist who has been creating paper art for years.  Every single one of those 26 photos is directly from his website.  He’s been published in books, he has had oodles of shows in Europe (none at the Hirshhorn, by the way), he has permanent art up on display in various corporate places.

He’s a "name".  It’s his work.

Why?  Why would someone send out an email claiming his artwork is the result of an anonymous collection of art contest entrants?  Why on earth didn’t they just say, "OMG.  You have to see this guy’s artwork!  He’s a genius!"?  There’s no need to actually copy the photos (a violation of copyright) and send them on in an email–just provide a link to his website.

What is the motivation in doing something like this?  The person who originally sent the very first email (first in a long chain, trust me, because googling the text pulled up a large number of hits) knew that what s/he was doing was telling an outright lie about the artwork.  Why deny the artist of his recognition?  This man has worked long and hard establishing a reputation in the art world.  Why steal it and apply it to no-one in particular?

Gah.  It’s frustrating to me.  Anyway, as a result of that email, I have a post for the day, and I have a website to point y’all to.  Go look at Peter’s website.  Enjoy his artwork.  It’s amazing.

Any ideas?

Wow!  My homeschooling post has generated a lot of chatter, new viewers, and an absolutely lovely take-off a la Mark Antony’s famous speech in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, written by Dana, which is an absolute must-read and much classier (and classical) than my rantlet.

Some very valid objections to homeschooling were voiced, as were some equally valid supportive points.  I’m trying to pull the various commentary together into a coherent whole that I can respond to, but it may take a while to work my way through this.

First, we have the objections to homeschooling and a few good points about public schooling:

• Kate suggested that out-of-the-home-school gives one survival instincts that are priceless in the corporate world…which can be true, but to me can be seen as a sad commentary on both schooling and corporations.  I know far too many nerds who only "survived" middle and high school, blossoming only once they were out of the strictly age-regimented, slightly Lord-Of-The-Flies world that the school system provided them.
• Lisa had a neighbor with 10 children who "homeschooled".  I put the word in quotes because apparently this family’s idea of homeschooling was to just let the children fend for themselves.  Unfortunately, yes, this can happen and does happen.
• Johnny points out that his eldest niece lost out on science and math teaching because of the prejudices of the science/math teacher in his sister’s homeschooling co-op.  This makes me sad and mad and frustrated–because any niece of Johnny’s is likely to have been more than capable of understanding and liking the scientific viewpoint.
• Dosia was homeschooled until she took control of her own life and enrolled herself in the local public school system in her sophomore year.  I salute:  that took immense guts.  I don’t think I could have gone against my own parents in so forceful a way at that age; I was a beige adolescent who liked to fade into the background as much as possible, and didn’t discover a real backbone or real courage until I had been living on my own for quite a while.  Dosia’s take is that her parents had insecurities and biases of their own that they impressed upon their children, and not having any other outlet, the children absorbed that set and have been struggling ever since to restructure their lives.

Then we look at some viewpoints from homeschooling proponents:

• Adso of Melk rightly points out that the dynamics of teaching 30 kids versus teaching three are vastly different, something totally glossed over by the author of the article.
• Dawn, a teacher who homeschooled three of her children, mentions in passing NCLB.  I despise NCLB with a passion, because I believe the way it is implemented almost forces school districts to "teach to the test".  In the Best of All Possible Worlds, school systems would sneer at the very idea of "teaching to the test" and proclaim, loudly and proudly, that providing children with good educations will allow them to pass the tests with flying colors any time.  Unfortunately, when federal funds are tied to test scores, pride and self-confidence take a flying leap out the nearest school administrator’s window.
• Erika says that her neighbor, a teacher considering homeschooling her kids, is also concerned about the way that NCLB "ties the hands" of teachers.
• Crimson Wife notes that the original article’s author has degrees in Early Childhood Education and Elementary Education.  I admit my jaw dropped when I read that.  For some reason (perhaps the poor writing, lousy structure, and the fifty kazillion spelling and grammar errors) I had just assumed that the author was a high school student, writing in response to an assignment.  I confess:  I didn’t even look to see.  That’ll teach me.

The problem, of course, is that the process and end result of homeschooling is highly influenced by the abilities, motivations, and determination of the parents doing the schooling.  On the one hand, public schooling does try to adhere to certain standards across the board, though how well the application of those standards works is spotty…on the other hand, over-standardization of homeschooling in an attempt to avoid egregious problems would end up making it a Mini-Me of the public school system.  On the one hand, you have cases like those mentioned by Johnny, Lisa, and Dosia, where homeschooling has clearly failed, either outright or in part, to produce well-balanced and well-educated end results (adults)…on the other hand, you have cases like those cited by Dawn and me, where the parents were determined to provide the best education they could for their children, while ensuring that the socializing aspects of childhood and adolescence were equally attended to.

I haven’t investigated longitudinal results.  If anyone can point me to studies done by universities or educational associations or well-respected thinktanks, I’d be interested to see them.  The problem I have is that many opponents of homeschooling tend to see it as a religion-driven method of indoctrinating children into specific religious worldviews, and throw the baby out with the bathwater, as it were, by waving their hands at the extremes.  The same happens on the other side, of course.  Me–I’m a numbers person.  I like studies.  I like hard numbers.  So sue me.  If someone is going to argue that homeschooling is either Bad or Good, I want to see solid evidence to back up that argument.   I’ve got anecdotes galore on both sides, but the plural of anecdote is not data.  Give me data.

OmegaGranny has, at times, hinted to me that I might consider it, motivated, I think, by worries about the mediocrity of the public school system.  I’ve thought of it.  But I personally don’t think I’d homeschool; my dotter is strong-willed and I am short-tempered, and that combination can be deadly. 

On a side note:  Folks noted that I used the F-word.  Ahem.  Yes, I did.  What can I say?  Yo!  Dudes!  I grew up on the near-nort’ side of Chicago, near Cabrini Green!  I worked in journalism!  My peeps, they use those words!  I could use "messed up their children", but that’s a dreadfully mild way to describe what some parents do to their kids.  There are times when a good F-bomb is about the only way I can express my indignation succinctly and clearly.

I thought, also, of titling this one, "The Wheels On The Bus Go Round and Round…", hoping to pass that hideous earworm on to my faithful readers.  But then I realized that would be cruel, and besides I had already given this post a title.  And then I realized that I could do both.  Bwahahaha!

Life has changed greatly in the past two and a half years.  Two and a half years ago, after a years’ worth of cruising my local real estate market and doing up a spreadsheet that showed the average asking price and average per-square-foot for houses in Hippy Dippy Enclave In The Woods, I googled "housing bubble" and found housing bubble blogs galore.  What a relief!  It wasn’t just me who was thinking that things were totally cockeyed in the world of real estate!

At the time, I thought many of the prognostications on the bubble blogs were a bit out of whack.  Commenters were gleefully anticipating the housing crash, and crowing that it would spread throughout the economy, ushering in a recession at the least and a depression at the worst.  I would raise a skeptical eyebrow as I read those particular prophecies.

In the meantime, it’s been like watching a movie when you’ve already read the book.  Everything–every damned thing–that those bubble bloggers and their commenters had laid out as the expected playing out of the bubble bursting has come to pass.  It’s pretty eerie.  What’s also eerie is that…well…the comments were full of common sense, and one kept wondering just why the mainstream media kept playing up the drumbeat of "it’s a whole new world out there!  Housing prices will never go down!"  The majority of economists cited by the MSM seemed equally purblind.

So I watched with amazement as the housing boom came to a screeching halt, and then as sales and prices started plummeting around the country.

One of the things that the bubble bloggers were talking about, way back when, was the coming tide of foreclosures.  They talked about "jingle mail"–where buyers who were negative on their mortgages and suddenly slammed with higher rates on their ARMs, would decide to just mail the keys to the house back to the lender, rather than fight against foreclosure.  And they said the immense number of foreclosures would bring the housing market down ever further, even quicker.

Well.  Let’s look at some things:

• 77% of the houses sold in Stockton, CA, in January were foreclosure sales (okay, in re-reading the story, it’s not clear whether that 77% is of all houses sold in Stockton, or of the houses sold by one particular broker).  In the Sacramento, CA, area there were 1,815 homes sold in January, but almost as many–1,782–foreclosures were recorded in that area in the same month.  Sit back and think about that–it’s just astonishing.
• Realtors are offering "foreclosure tour" buses, where the real estate salesperson grabs a list of foreclosing houses off the database, rents a bus, fills it with people who want to buy, and just spends a day shepherding these people from house to house, vacant, empty, owned by the bank.  The bank which is desperately trying to forestall further bleeding from the money accounts, and offering what seem to be bargain-basement prices.  Of course, some of these houses are going to be in dreadful neighborhoods, and some of the amazing deals will turn out to be money pits.  But there they are:  Pismo Beach, CA…Stockton, CA…San Jose…Las Vegas…Palm Beach, FL…Phoenix…Orlando…Michigan.
• Of course, someone has decided to cash in on the foreclosure business by offering a "how to put on a foreclosure bus tour!" seminar.  A few years ago, it was "how to make money fast, fast, fast by flipping real estate!"
• RealtyTrac claimed that there were 2,203,295 foreclosure filings across the country last year, on 1,285,873 properties, with more than 1% of all households across the country in foreclosure.  This was up 75% from the year before.  (Why are there more filings than properties?  I’d guess either some folks managed to close the door on the foreclosure wolf, or else some folks had more than one filing put on their property–people with multiple mortgages, perhaps.) 
• And homeless people have started moving into foreclosed houses as squatters.

The bubble blogs claimed that mortgage brokerage companies would start going out of business…and, sure enough, at the start of 2007 they started being able to track the bankruptcies.

But now it’s spreading.  The way that mortgages got purchased, chopped up, and resold as "investment vehicles", it turns out that a wide variety of financial investment companies find themselves holding the bag on loans going belly up.  The media has been playing up the "subprime mortgage" as the main culprit–mortgages handed out to poor credit risks.  But reports lately have shown that the same problems are showing up in the "more prime" mortgages as well…because what was risky was not just handing out money to people who could show they were breathing, but the fact that adjustable rate mortgages were the name of the game, people were mortgaging up to 100% of their new property, and people were taking out home equity lines of credit on their properties’ perceived value.  Now that housing prices are dropping, you’ve got ordinary everyday "good credit risks" who have discovered that their various mortgages and HELOCs have interest rates going up and they suddenly can’t pay what they were able to pay previously.

You’ve got real estate sales people who were making six figures two years ago who have had to quit the real estate business and get jobs.  You’ve got homebuilding companies that are either suddenly holding huge "sales" or else simply vanishing, even in Small Mountain University Town.  Even the companies that insure the financial investment companies against housing market losses are suddenly tottering.  Mortgage companies, trying to contact the mortgagees who flinch away from the phone ringing these days, are disguising their pleas to please pay up as wedding invitations (yes!).

And two years ago…two years ago, people were standing in line when new home communities opened their sales office doors, with prices ratcheting up $25,000 within a day as the hordes swept in.

What a difference two years makes.