Jared had a pretty good time with his first night as a Tiger Cub Scout last night. One of the nicest boys from his class will be in his den, and I think the boy’s very cool dad and mom (who is Jared’s in-school assistant) will be at the meetings. His den mother is very nice and seems excited to include Jared in all of the scouting
Last night he made a train out of little pieces of wood and glue, and then scribbled on top with a yellow magic marker. He did a good job, and some other kids were trying to copy the great job he did piecing it together, saying, “we have to do it the way Jared did!” But I’d say he had the most fun running around with a few other kids taking turns throwing a hat around and then chasing it.
But when I filled out the application for Jared, I started feeling a little worried. On the form, they excerpt the first paragraph of the Declaration of Religious Principle:
The Boy Scouts of America maintains that no member can grow into the best kind of citizen without recognizing an obligation to God and, therefore, recognizes the religious element in the training of the member, but it is absolutely nonsectarian in its attitude toward that religious training. Its policy is that the home and organization or group with which the member is connected shall give definite attention to religious life.
Only persons willing to subscribe to these precepts from the Declaration of Religious Principle and to the Bylaws of the Boy Scouts of America shall be entitled to certificates of leadership.
Oh crap, eh? I guess this exempts me from being a leader, but what does it mean for Jared? I looked up the BSA National Council on the web, and found a page that outlines a scout’s duty to God:
The Boy Scout Handbook (11th ed.) explains a Scouts’ “duty to God” as “Your family and religious leaders teach you about God and the ways you can serve. You do your duty to God by following the wisdom of those teachings every day and by respecting and defending the rights of others to practice their own beliefs.”
I could probably find ways to convince myself that as atheists, we were doing those things by doing nothing, using the standard atheist interpretation of “In God we Trust” printed on our currency: “Trust no one with your money.” And in that context, the requirement for Bobcat Cub scouts that they:
“Put God first. Do what you know God wants you to do.”
…becomes:
“Put no one first. Do what you know nobody wants you to do.”
…which is at least funny, but could lead to Jared covering more surfaces in tiles of bologna. But a Wolf Cub scout has to:
“[t]alk with your folks about what they believe is their duty to God,” “[g]ive some ideas on how you can practice or demonstrate your religious beliefs,” and “[f]ind out how you can help your church, synagogue, or religious fellowship.”
And I don’t see a good way for Jared to do that. Besides which, I like the people in scouting, and I don’t want to feel like I’m lying to them. I especially don’t want to involve Jared in lying.
What’s annoying about all of this is that Jared isn’t really capable of understanding abstract concepts like God and religion. Jared still doesn’t really understand Santa, and thinks that Dora and Diego are actual people. Even if we were dyed-in-the-wool Babptists, Jared couldn’t comprehend, let alone accomplish any of the acts of religious expression the scouts require.
So what do I do? Hope that he gets tired of scouting? Talk my way around any religious discussions? Use my knowledge of the bible to fake it? On that note, let’s end with a passage from Isaiah, chapter 45, verse 3:
I form the light and create darkness,
I bring prosperity and create disaster;
I, the LORD, do all these things.
[Note: I'd answer the question "What's wrong with pundits?" but who has that kind of time?]
Responding to an article by David Borlind, the Macalope writes:
…but one of the biggest problems with the current state of punditry is to confuse what the public wants with what the pundit wants. The two are not necessarily the same.
What bothers me is that tech pundits all seem to be feature obsessed. I guess the progression is something like:
But they go farther than that, because this check-box obsession colors all of their perceptions, and you end up with market predictions based on feature lists. It’s all well and good to say, “I think you should buy Product A because it includes extra dongles,” or whatever, but when you say, “Nobody will buy Product B because it lacks extra dongles,” you’re treading on thin ice.
Especially when Product B is made by Apple.
Haven’t these people gotten the memo? Apple isn’t famous for all the features they add to computers, they’re famous for leaving things out. Sure, they were among the first manufacturers to ship all of their computers with USB ports, but everybody remembers the fact that they left floppy drives out of iMacs. Yes, they added video to iPods, but what’s more remarkable are the things they’ve never added: FM receivers, WMA support, subscription services, displays of meta-data, removable batteries, removable storage and plain old USB ports.
And they probably never will.
What these people are forgetting is that most consumers don’t shop with feature lists. Why do you think there are so many 480i TVs for sale? No sane person would buy one if they knew better, but that’s not how consumers shop. The justifications I hear for buying consumer electronics sound like:
Any pundit that doesn’t understand these things needs to be fired. Aren’t there minimum requirements for these jobs?
I was checking my blog’s spam filter this morning and came across a particularly annoying message. Not only did I have a trackback that was marked as spam, but the trackback was from a link-farm site that was copying my content. Gee - thanks for the notification, asshole.
As is customary on this blog, I’ve got my incredibly naive and myopic fight picks for tomorrow night’s free fight on SpikeTV. Let the idiocy begin!
Kenny Florian vs Din Thomas
Kenny “KenFlo” Florian made his entrance into the UFC losing to Diego Sanchez in the finale of The Ultimate Fighter (TUF) 1. In his defense, Florian was fighting 30 pounds above his natural weight class, and has since only lost to noted steroid-connoisseur Sean Sherk. He has looked better in each fight, and is an impressive Brazillian Jiu-Jitsu fighter with razor-sharp elbows on the ground. Florian was impressive in his last fight a scant two months ago and is taking this fight on short notice to replace Spencer Fisher, out due to a staph infection from the filthy mats at Miletich Fighting Systems.
Din “Dinyero” Thomas, on the other hand, has as many losses as Florian has wins, but luckily has 20 wins to go with them. He made his debut in the UFC getting his ass handed to him by BJ Penn, which nobody can really blame him for. He has recorded wins over current welterweight champion, Matt Serra, and former lightweight champ Spencer Fisher, sidelined from tomorrow’s fight by the aforementioned staph infection (seriously, Pat, would it kill you to clean the place once in a while?). He also beat the scary-chested Clay Guida, but has an otherwise good, but unremarkable career.
Who takes it? Thomas has the experience, but Florian has momentum. Florian has an impressive BJJ background, but Thomas has submitted 11 opponents. “KenFlo” is a stupid name, but “Dinyero” may actually be stupider. I’m going with Thomas by decision. BJJ experts are unlikely to get caught in a submission, so I expect a lot of rolling around on the mat for three rounds. And at that point, the judges will have a hard time awarding the win to a skinny Ben Stiller look-alike.
Chris Leben vs. Terry Martin
Chris “The Crippler” Leben is a hard-working, hard-hitting fighter. Terry Martin has more experience, fewer losses, more knockouts, and more submissions. Martin wins because Leben is a dumb-ass.
Junior Assuncao vs. Nate Diaz
Junior Assuncao has been set up. He was hand-picked to make sure that Nate Diaz, the recent TUF 5 winner, looks like a winner after his fight with Manny Gamburyan was stopped by Gamburyan’s shoulder dislocating while taking Diaz to the mat. Sorry Junior, Papa Dana didn’t let you have this fight so you could win. Diaz by submission.
Pete Sell vs. Nate Quarry
Pete “Drago” Sell lost an improbable fight to Scott Smith in the finale for his season of TUF, knocked out by Smith out after delivering a vicious body blow that would have ended the fight if not for a quick right hand to the jaw of Sell. Nate “Rock” Quarry kicked Sell’s ass before. Quarry kicks Sell’s ass again.
Edilberto de Oliveira vs. Luke Cummo
I don’t know anything at all about Edilberto “Crocota” de Oliveira. Luke “The Silent Assassin” Cummo drinks his own piss. Cummo wins because Crocota will be afraid to touch him.
Leonard Garcia vs. Cole Miller
Leonard “Bad Boy” Garcia is a bad boy. Cole “Magrino” Miller is the guy I keep thinking is the much cooler Joe Lauzon. Miller spanks the bad boy.
Joe Veres vs. Gray Maynard
Joe “Mighty” Veres is, evidently, mighty. Gray “The Bully” Maynard knocked himself out in the process of beating the crap out of Rob Emerson. Maynard bullies Veres.
Kuniyoshi Hironaka vs. Thiago Alves
Kuniyoshi Hironaka and Thiago “Pitbull” Alves have both lost to John Fitch, but Hironaka has beaten Nick Diaz, so I guess I’m picking Hironaka.
Dustin Hazelett vs. Jonathan Goulet
Dustin Hazelett is from Cincinnati, home to the soon to have his ass handed to him Rich Franklin. Jonathan “The Road Warrior” Goulet is from Canada. Since I don’t want to start an international incident with a certain Habs fan that reads this blog, Goulet wins by knockout.
But what do you think?
We had a pretty good day at Six Flags America today (sorry, no pictures), but I did something really stupid. We got off the Roar coaster and wandered over to one of those swinging pirate ship rides that Jared loves. The ride was running, but empty of people, and there were a couple attendants sitting at the entrance. There was no sign or chain across the entrance, which was customary for the closed rides we had seen, so we wandered through the line, only to be told that the ride was closed.
I figured that if there were attendants on duty and the ride was running, they were probably just late in getting it set up, and it would be open later in the day.
So with no actual knowledge of whether or not the ride would run, I told Jared that it would be running later.
Or from Jared’s perspective: I promised Jared that this ride was going to be running later and that I would take him on it, and that if we didn’t go on it, it would ruin the day, so this was the most important ride in the park.
Really.
So when we strolled by at 2:30 and they were closed, Jared erupted. He had been begging to go back to the Roar for the last half hour, so I thought that was the ride he wanted to go on, but I realize now that he didn’t know the ride of the pirate ship (neither do I, obviously), so he wanted to go to the roar so that he could get on the ship.
The rest of the day was downhill from there. We went on the Roar, had some Ben & Jerry’s, and left for the day, but not without buckets of tears and howls of pain.
But like I said, a pretty good day.
In an interview with the Australian Herald Sun, Trent Reznor says:
I’ve have one record left that I owe a major label, then I will never be seen in a situation like this again. If I could do what I want right now, I would put out my next album, you could download it from my site at as high a bit-rate as you want, pay $4 through PayPal. Come see the show and buy a T-shirt if you like it. I would put out a nicely packaged merchandise piece, if you want to own a physical thing. And it would come out the day that it’s done in the studio, not this “Let’s wait three months” bulls—.
Wow. Also:
I steal music too, I’m not gonna say I don’t. But it’s tough not to resent people for doing it when you’re the guy making the music, that would like to reap a benefit from that. On the other hand, you got record labels that are doing everything they can to piss people off and rip them off.
Putting Rick Rubin in charge of Columbia Records was a good start, but they’d be better off just closing shop because eventually every artist is going to come to the same realization that Prince, Trent and Paul McCartney have come to: you don’t need those people. The record companies, from what I can tell, do absolutely nothing right. They steal from artists, they take a huge portion of the profits, and they do everything they can to alienate music fans.
Just close it all down, people. To quote Michael Dell out of context: “Shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.”
For my 24th birthday, my good friend Chad bought me a bottle of black label Bushmills Irish Whiskey. Unfortunately, my birthday fell on a Thursday, so the get-together we had was mostly non-alcoholic since everyone had to get up for work the next morning.
That Friday night while I was hanging out playine Quake 2 with Kellie, I remembered the Black Bush, and decided to have a glass on the rocks. Now, being a bachelor, ice in my house only came in large bags from convenience stores, because pouring water into trays is too much like cooking. Unfortunately, the ice in those bags tends to clump together.
So I grabbed a glass in one hand and a chunk of ice in the other and tried to cram the ice into the glass. When I realized it was too big, I pounded it on the remaining ice in the freezer to knock some chunks off, and tried again. No dice. But by this point my hand was getting cold and I was tired of dealing with the ice and really wanted a drink. So I started shifting the ice around to see if it would fit in the glass from different angles. When I realized that wasn’t working, I got a little ticked off and I just started trying to force the ice in.
And you can tell where this is going.
The funny thing is that as far as I can tell, the ice didn’t break the glass. What happened instead is that I crushed the glass with my left hand and then shoved my right hand into the broken pieces. And one of those pieces embedded itself in my palm. I tossed the glass and the ice in the trash, and started fishing pieces out of my hand. I thought I got them all out, but by that point there was a lot of blood, and I realized that I was going to have to go to the hospital.
This presented a number of problems. First of all, I was in the Air Force stationed at Fort Meade, which meant that my only choice of hospitals was Kimbrough hospital, not a place known for its high quality of care. And the other problem was that the only car we could take had a manual transmission. Kellie, didn’t drive stick, and my right hand had a big hole that was leaking blood.
Worse yet, it wasn’t even my car. Mine had broken down, and my buddy John had loaned us his Geo Storm while he was out of town. Not the ideal car or situation to teach Kellie how to drive stick.
So I wrapped my hand up in paper towels, then wrapped a hand towel around that. I held my palm against the overhead light in the car so that it would be elevated, and so that if it bled through the towels, it would be on the plastic and not the cloth of the interior. I had to shift with my left hand, steer with one knee, and try to work the pedals with whichever leg wasn’t steering at the moment.
Not really ideal transport.
And of course, jamming your open would against a hard plastic surface to keep it from bleeding as you bounce around the well-maintained (ahem) roads of Maryland isn’t fun at all.
But we made it to Kimbrough. Since we got there before even a dedicated alcoholic like myself had had a chance to grab a drink, the emergency room was pretty empty, and I got to see a doctor right away. The doctor injected the area with some anesthetic, and I remembered a story I had read about a new study released in the New England Journal of Medicine that stated that redheads required 25% more local anesthetic than other people.
I’ve always dealt pretty well with pain. Having my tongue and nipples pierced was a breeze. I actually enjoy getting tattoos. And evidently, I’ve had a number of kidney stones that I didn’t really notice. But like most redheads, I can’t stand to have my hair pulled. Pulling out a grey hair (an increasingly common occurrence) will bring tears to my eyes. And when I’ve been prescribed pain pills, they never seemed to work as well for me as they do for other people. So I thought there might be something to that story.
I realized that doctors probably don’t have time to keep up on those sorts of things when they’re busy treating patients, so I told the doctor what I had read, and he seemed to think it was interesting. He left for a few minutes to let the anesthetic work its magic, and I wondered if he was taking me seriously.
When he came back and started shoving the needle through my skin to sew the wound up, I winced in pain. He leaned back and looked me in the eye, saying, “You can feel that?” And then he did what doctors always do in those situations: he jammed his finger in the wound. I grunted out something like,”Sir, I know you’re an officer, but please don’t do that again or I will punch you in the face.” He nodded, added more anesthetic and left for a few minutes.
The second time around, after adding the extra anesthetic I had asked for, everything went fine. The told me to keep the wound clean and dry and come back in 6 days to have the stitches removed.
So of course I didn’t. I pulled them out a few days later myself, and didn’t worry about my palm for a few months until I was walking up a flight of stairs and felt a horrible shooting pain. For the next 6 years or so, any time I would bend my palm so that my thumb came near my pinky, it felt like somebody was stabbing me.
The reason, it turns out, was that there was a tiny piece of glass still in my hand that the doctor hadn’t noticed. Scar tissue had formed around it, and a nerve was between the glass and the tissue. I know all of this because in 2004 the glass started poking its way through my skin about a half inch from where my scar is. After a few days of it working its way to the surface, I was able to grab it and pull it out. The glass and scar tissue were easy enough to yank out, but there was a little string of fiber connecting them to my hand, and every time I squeezed the tissue, it hurt like crazy.
So I yanked it out.
I don’t recommend doing that. To say that it was painful is an understatement. I don’t think anything I’ve ever felt was as intense as that pain.
Now I have two marks on my palm. A little white line shaped like a 7 where the glass went in, and a tiny little hole that looks a bit like a sphincter where the glass came out. Having a butt on my hand is a little odd, but it makes for a fun story.
There’s a hypothetical question that crops up every once in a while in online autism communities, and it’s this:
“We can give your child a shot now, and when he wakes up tomorrow he will no longer be autistic. Would you like us to give him the shot?”
Strangely, this question comes up a lot more online than it does in “the real world,” mostly because as hypotheticals go, it’s pretty far out. For instance, while we don’t know much about what causes autism, but we know quite a bit about its physical manifestation in the brains of autistics. One of these is that autistics have a different structure to their brain than other people. Instead of a spiderweb of interconnected neurons, autistics seem to have columns of brain tissue with more linear connections.
The reason this is important is that your brain is you. The structure of your brain determines not only the way you think, but the kind of thinking you can do. These differences in structure are a part of why it can be so difficult for autistics to learn certain kinds of information, and also why they can be so good at other kinds of thoughts.
So when you talk about a “cure” for autism, you’re talking about something that would require re-wiring the structure of the brain, taking it apart and putting it back together. And that’s impossible. Not just difficult - impossible. Have you seen the pictures of the enormous spiderweb in Texas? Imagine a spiderweb a hundred times larger and denser, and then imagine trying to use a pair of tweezers to reconnect every strand to turn it into the Taj Mahal.
Worse yet, all of our memories are wrapped up in the way that our neurons are connected, so even if you could rearrange everything, you’d be destroying every memory, every behavior, every function of the brain in question. So rearranging the brain would be like giving somebody a complete lobotomy - like turning them into an infant.
But even if you could get past all of the technical hurdles that make a cure impossible, you have to ask yourself, “what would a cure mean?” It would mean changing the fundamental identity of the person in question. The way that a person thinks defines who she is. So part of the “cure” question is, “Do you want to trade your autistic child for a different child?”
Would I trade Jared’s problems for somebody else’s? Would I give up his strengths in order to get rid of his weaknesses? If Jared didn’t scream and cry when things didn’t go his way, would he still be completely unwilling to lie to me? If Jared was better at making friends, would he still amaze me with his sense of humor? If he didn’t wake me up in the middle of the night, would he still walk everywhere holding my hand telling me how much fun we were having?
So needless to say, I’m not looking for some impossible cure. I like my child and wouldn’t trade him for somebody else. Yes he can be difficult, but to be perfectly honest, an autistic boy is no more trouble and worry than a teenage girl. And in two months, I’ll have one of each.
Yesterday’s grill special here at work was an angus patty with pepperjack and ham on a croissant. They called it the “Cind-wich” after Cindy, the lady who runs the grill. I call it the “Rosh Hashanah Special.” It’s the perfect thing to serve when all of the observant Jews have stayed home.
And luckily, they had it again today: delicious.
In his introduction to The Paleolithic Diet, Dr. Ben Balzer writes:
There are races of people who are all slim, who are stronger and faster than us. They all have straight teeth and perfect eyesight. Arthritis, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, stroke, depression, schizophrenia and cancer are absolute rarities for them. These people are the last 84 tribes of hunter-gatherers in the world. They share a secret that is over 2 million years old. Their secret is their diet- a diet that has changed little from that of the first humans 2 million years ago, and their predecessors up to 7 million years ago. Theirs is the diet that man evolved on, the diet that is coded for in our genes. It has some major differences to the diet of “civilization”. You are in for a few big surprises.
I’m sure you’re not surprised to find out that he’s not an anthropologist. He’s a “family physician.”
What really surprises me is that apparently Dr. Balzer has gone to a lot of trouble to create this diet without ever having seen a hunter-gatherer. I mean, doesn’t he get the Discovery channel? And why wouldn’t he at least look up any statistics about the health of the people he’s writing about?
Do I even need to describe why this is stupid? Is anyone taken in by this crap?