Author: Gerry

Categories
Misc

700 Pushups

In addition to the various traditional techniques associated with martial arts like kicking, blocking and punching the martial arts school has a physical component in order to earn a black belt. One of those is to perform 100 push ups and 100 sit-ups. I’m assuming it’s supposed to be 100 straight, although we’ve never done more that 25 in a set in our testing. Regardless, I can’t do it at this point. Not even close.

From my years of weight training for football, I thought I had a decent start on this task. Further, the pitch the instructors use for making it seem more attainable is that a student only has to improve by 2 per month over the 4 year period towards becoming a black belt. Doesn’t seem so bad, really.

Well, I’ve been stuck at about the same level ever since my arm fully recovered from the surgery. And that level is about the same I was at prior to the surgery. I can complete about 35 for a single set, or I can manage a couple of sets of 25 before I run out of steam.

So, in order to try and make some progress, I’ve decided that over a 1 week period, I’m going to do 700 pushups- 100 per day. Today is day 3. I didn’t do push-ups per say yesterday, I used our Total Gym instead but managed to do the 100 reps in 2 sets.

My arms hurt. My chest hurts. Four more days to go. Yay.

Categories
Misc Notweet

Maybe Next Year

Via Wired’s GeekDad twitter feed, here’s a list of the top 50 Dad blog’s. Sadly, yours truly isn’t on the list. I’ll have to cull through some of them looking for inspiration for future posts.

One of the hard things about the blog for me, which I kind of anticipated, is coming up with interesting material. Obviously, the main source has been the kids and my trials and tribulations with raising them on a day-to-day basis. But they’re in a kind of holding pattern now, where change is slower so I’ve had fewer new things to write about. At least, that’s how it feels.

Thus, I’ve supplemented the blog with stuff about woodworking, computer maintenance (Linux particularly), bread recipes, football and other items along the way. Yet even here, the posts seem to take on the same flavor over time. Even with football, the themes are similar or at least they seem that way to me. Thus, I’ve posted less about football this year than any year previous.

I’ve no plans for going anywhere, but I’d like to find a new source to tap or a new angle from which to looks at things. In the meantime, check out some of the blogs in the links above, if nothing else you should be able to find something interesting to read.

Categories
Family

Girls versus Boys

Last night, the Wife took the boy to his martial arts lesson, leaving me and the lass to hold down the fort here at the house. After cleaning up after dinner and doing a little reading, she wanted to play a game downstairs in the basement. So I finished up with a couple of things and then went down to join her in the basement, where she’d been preparing for the game.

Turns out her idea of a game was to have me pretend to be a kid and her pretend to be, well, either a parent or a teacher helping me learn to read. She had set out a bunch of the simple word books and had me pick one. Then, she started to read the book to me, complete with holding the book up and asking me to “try to read this” and such. I also had to figure out when she actually was stuck with a particular word and help her out on occasion. But for the most part, I had to try and recall all the difficulties they had with pronouncing words and mimic them so she could “do it for me.” We got along pretty well.

After reading the books, the game wasn’t over. She then told me I stunk and had to take a shower, though she was quick to add “Not really Dad, just pretend…” That was a relief. So we went through the whole routine of showering and bathing and brushing teeth and putting me to bed. I’m guessing getting up for school was next, but by that time the Wife and the boy returned home and the game ended.

I note this only because it occurred to me that, while this game is actually a variation on a pretty regular theme for her, the boy has never once played a game like that. The closest he could be said to have come are on the occasions where he’s come home and pretended to be a dentist and clean his sister’s teeth. Lately, fugettaboutit. He’s been fascinated by shows about the deadliest animals in the world like spiders and sharks and the like.

Just some anecdotal evidence regarding the differences between girls and boys. Both have had the same upbringing with perhaps the only difference in opportunity for them being her dance lessons versus his martial arts lessons. I know it’s improper to notice these things in polite company, but it’s there regardless.

Categories
Politics

A Problem with Gun Control Statistics

This article came across my Twitter feed today and after reading through it, I had a thought related to the gun control argument going on right now.

First, the majority of the case against guns lies in statistics. For one, there is no data to demonstrate that having a gun for self defense purposes is actually valid in practice. For two, where massacres are concerned, gun control advocates are quick to point out that none of them have ever been stopped by a citizen with a gun.

As to the first, I’d guess there’s a data problem. While there are police reports and so forth to aggregate data related to gun usage in crimes and the like, how would a researcher go about figuring out how many times a citizen pulls a weapon on a would be robber or whatever, which immediately causes the offender to retreat, and then nothing ever get reported? I’ve personally heard of a couple of stories along these lines- I suspect that’s the only way anyone would ever know.

As to the second statistic, well, if you read the above link you might already know where I’m going. There’s a definitional problem. A massacre becomes one because there’s only 1 (or a group) armed person firing at unarmed, defenseless citizens. But when someone is present to confront the attacker, then a massacre becomes no one dead, hopefully. As a second data point, there was a shooting in Clackamas, Oregon recently where the shooter was confronted by someone with a conceal carry. Only 2 people died and the shooter took his own life shortly after the individual with the concealed carry permit confronted him. Also notice, our hero here doesn’t exactly sound like a cowboy (from the article):

“I don’t ever want to see anyone that way ever,” said Meli. “It just bothers me.”

Categories
Family

Control is an Illusion

So, when last I’d mentioned the subject, the Wife and I had decided there was no real virtue to telling the kids anything about the massacre at Sandy Hook in Newtown. They’d arrived home and pretty clearly weren’t aware. So we had turned off the TV and not said anything to them.

Unfortunately for our plans, the boy had a friend over for a sleep over. When we picked him up, I asked the friend’s Mom if he knew anything about what had happened, just because we wanted to be prepared for the possibility that the topic might come up. She didn’t believe he had because he hadn’t said anything to her about it. She also said she really didn’t have any intention of telling him, which was no problem to accommodate on our part.

Well, turns out she was incorrect. She’d been working Friday night and he’d seen the news that night. The Wife was on the way home from seeing Rise of the Guardians (which was thoroughly enjoyed by all the kids) when he started talking about it.

The boy was incredulous, apparently blurting out “Why am I always the last one to find out about these thing?” or something to that effect. His friend also mentioned the shooting in Aurora from the Summer, which only annoyed the boy further because he hadn’t known about that either.

The Wife and I stand behind the decisions there- neither of us can really come up with any good reason for to make them aware of what had happened. If they’d been older, we certainly would have. But it just goes to show how easily the best laid plans can be circumvented. Ultimately, it’s probably a good thing because other kids in school tomorrow will almost certainly know about it. So there’s a very good chance their ignorance was only ever going to be temporary.

As a consequence, we touched on the subject again tonight, asking them if they had any questions. They didn’t. So now, we’ll see what they come home with tomorrow.

Categories
Family

The Path Less Taken

After yesterday, a common refrain has been “be sure to give your kids an extra hug.” Well, I’ve been giving mine an extra yell.

The first one was directed at the lass last night. We were getting ready for dinner and I needed someone to get some milk from our small fridge in the basement. So I called both kids over and told them to play a game of Rock, Scissors, Paper. The boy won (paper covers rock, if you’re curious) so I turned to the lass and told her to go downstairs and get the milk.

Well, the boy and the Wife were amused as they realized the little ruse I’d pulled. It’s always an argument about who goes downstairs to retrieve the milk or vegetables. I tried to end-run that whole thing and I thought I’d done a decent job of it.

The lass, however, was not amused. Not. In. The. Slightest. She immediately started whining, all the way downstairs. She came back upstairs and she was all but openly weeping and crying.

It was so egregious and, given yesterday’s events, I simply could not abide it. I called her out, telling her she was being ridiculous, that her behavior was way over the top and she’d better knock it off. I almost threatened her with the ol’ “I’ll give you something to cry about” but I refrained. At that point, she didn’t know about the massacre in Newtown, and I didn’t want to say anything specific. But I finished with something to the effect, “There are people out there with much bigger problems than yours right now.”

By the time I was done, she was also basically done. She huffed a bit, but the over acting had ceased. I cooled off while eating my dinner.

The second event happened this morning and involved both of them. They were getting ready for hockey, and the lass once again started in with dickering and whining about not being able to find socks or having problems with her tape, or whatever as she prepared for practice.

The Wife had given them a heads up almost an hour ahead of time, yet here we were, at the last minute and still not ready. And what’s worse, the attitude was starting to flow.

Once again, I let her have it. I finished with a promise that she’d be done with hockey if I had to go through this again. The boy asked if the same went for him and I wheeled on him and told him notice had been served. The antics over hockey and getting prepared for practice were done, or their participation in hockey would be done. Period.

I try to exercise patience as often as possible. My own thinking is repeatedly blowing my stack will simply desensitize them to it. But yesterday’s events put a certain perspective on things- thinking about those families in Newtown whose Christmas is ruined, likely for the rest of their lives. The stuff these guys are going through are trivial by comparison. I know I shouldn’t be taking that out on on them, especially since they’re not aware of what happened. But perspective is needed and, for the moment, I’m not of a mind to humor these sorts of antics.

Categories
Family

Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown Connecticut

The awful events that happened in Newtown today had an eerie familiarity about them. The way the news trickled out, it reminded me of how 9/11 unfolded for me.

I first heard about “a shooting” at a school in Newtown this morning, there were few details at that point other than there was 1 confirmed death and it was believed to be the perpetrator. Police were on the scene. I naturally assumed the best: the situation was stabilized, the perpetrator had been shot by the police. This is all very similar to when I first saw the news that “a plane has struck the World Trade Center.” To this day, I remember thinking “Great, some whackjob…”

Then the facts slowly started trickling in: there were some injured, it took place at an elementary school, the entire district was in lockdown. Bad news for sure, but not a disaster yet. Next I started hearing things about the perpetrator possibly going after the principal. Then that the principal was, in fact, dead and there were injuries among the children and faculty.

Then the bombshell that 27 people were dead, the majority of them children. My mind immediately recalled the fact that it was an elementary school and the gravity of the event finally hit me. At that point, it was like the Twin Towers had just collapsed.

All this took place over the course of an hour-and-a-half or so.

Newtown is on the other side of the state from where we live. But for all it’s distance, as I listened to the description of the town I had another disturbing realization: Newtown could just as easily be my town. Not in the sense that “it could be any town” but in the sense that much of the same qualities that described Newtown also describe my town. Something like this isn’t supposed to happen there, or here.

I’m mad. Mad that someone would commit such an atrocity. That bastard obliterated the lives of 28 families. He took their Christmas away from them. There are kids without their best friend now, gone because of the whims of a monster. There are families who, upon hearing the news, went to Sandy Hook Elementary praying to their God it wasn’t their child- and those prayers went unanswered. There are children who will have nightmares and who lost innocence today.

At the same time, I recognize the futility of my anger: it didn’t affect me personally, it won’t bring anyone back or change a damn thing. It’s likely more a reaction to a greater truth: the helplessness of the situation. Our kid’s school is locked and someone has to ring a bell to gain entry; but it’s a ruse. The people in the office barely check and if the person is known or familiar to them, entry is granted. Need I say more? I live 5 minutes from the school, but God forbid the worst, I might as well be on the other side of the state, in Newtown.

There is sadness as well, for all those families whose Christmas has been ruined. Sadness for a town that must deal with something that can’t be prepared for; a town that is an hour’s drive away.

We decided not to mention anything to the kids, assuming they hadn’t heard anything. What, after all, are we supposed to tell them? That monsters are real? That they aren’t big and hairy with sharp teeth and bad breath and drool, rather they look just like us? That we can’t even tell they are monsters, until it’s too late?

Categories
Misc Notweet

Sausage Making

In this case, literally!

I’ve been eating a lot of breakfast sausage of late because of a diet change, and I finally decided to give it a go making my own. Having only a basic idea of how to go about it (slice up some pork, season it then send it through a grinder), I googled it and up turned an Alton Brown recipe. I’ve found that, by and large, an Alton Brown recipe is a good place to start when venturing into uncharted cooking waters.

The only modification I made to the recipe was the amounts and I didn’t use any salt because the fatback was coated in it. I basically scaled everything up by a factor of 4 because I had a, roughly, 9 pound butt to slice up. Alright, enough with the snickering…

I went with one-and-a-half pounds of fatback. I’m not sure if what I got was salt pork, or fatback. It was labeled fatback, but was heavily coated in salt and seemed like it was alternately called salt pork. Perhaps I got something that was like bride-of-salt-pork-and-fatback.

Anyway, it was a long process turning all that meat and fat into sausage. I’d say I had about 3 hours worth of work into it. The three sticking points were cutting up the pork butt, sending the mixture through the grinder, and finally turning it all into patties. A lot of work making sausage. The patty making had me wondering about where I could get me some intestine. I suppose a sock might work as well. Or stockings…

Anyway, I’m happy to report that it’s a good recipe. I cooked up a patty and scarfed it down with gusto. The boy got to sample a bite as well and even he enjoyed it. The Wife will be the real test though- she not much of a sausage fan, but this doesn’t taste like store bought sausage, so perhaps it stands a chance.

At any rate, if you’re looking for something different, here’s your ticket.

Categories
Family

Enough Games

The boy keeps coming home with different games to play. They’re typically math related. For instance, the games initially involved some kind of coin-flipping sequence so they could learn a little bit about probability. There was also a spinner based game with a similar goal. More recently, we’ve been doing spelling games to help him learn his spelling words. And how could I forget the verb-tense game, where he had to choose the proper tense of a verb based on where his playing piece landed. Loads of fun that one. (No sarcasm sense…)

I’m guessing the idea is to make learning fun, or something suitably trite like that. But most of the time, he just wants to get the game done and over with. I can’t really blame him, the games are pretty lame across the board- even the coin flipping ones. It’s hard to believe he’s getting much out of them at this point, aside from getting a little more one-on-one time with Mom or Dad. But then, that’s not something he’s ever lacked.

With the majority of the school year to go, I don’t hold out much hope that the games will end any time soon.

Categories
Family

A Minor Fender Bender

The boy and I were out and about this weekend. It rained most of the time. I was heading out to play a little racquetball since I won’t get a chance to play at my normal time for the next several weeks due to a scheduling quirks this year.

We were about 10 minutes from the courts when I took a left exit. This particular exit I’ve travelled many a time and it’s a bit tight. One of those exits where as it bends around the turn gets tighter before it finally straightens out to merge with the next road. I’ve never had any trouble with it before though, and I approached it like I always do.

I felt the front tires lose grip, so I immediately eased off the gas and started turning the wheel against the cars spin, in the direction I wanted to go. But the tires couldn’t regain traction and I continued to fishtail. In hindsight, I probably should have just thrown the wheel in the other direction to force a spin out, but at the time I was concerned because this particular exit is also a bridge so the shoulders are tight and there isn’t a lot of room.

The wheels never did grab, but the direction of the slide eventually caused the front end of the car to strike the barrier. The car had lost most of it’s momentum by then, and the impact caused the car to complete it’s spin. Fortunately, the cars behind me had plenty of time to react and slow down, otherwise I’d have been the first in a long pile up.

With the car stopped, I was now facing the wrong way. The engine was still running, so I tried putting it into reverse to start a ‘K’ turn. Right off the bat, it was obvious that nothing had happened to the engine or drive train, but there was something off with the steering. I got the car turned around without too much trouble, and pulled off the road at a convenient point to inspect the damage.

To my eye, it isn’t too bad. There’s the scuffs and dents on the front fender area where the car struck the guard rail, and the rim of the left from tire has a nick in it. The tire also got pinched, but it wasn’t compromised to the point of being flat. My guess is the wheel alignment is messed up, and that’s why it’s funky to steer at the moment.

After the brief assessment, we got back in the car, and that was when the boy offered a rather pithy assessment of the whole episode, “I didn’t like that.”

He handled the situation well. He didn’t get overly upset, though he admitted to being scared. He asked me if I was scared and I told him I had been; but, I stressed that we were OK and that the car was in good enough shape to get us home. He continued to ask lots of questions, I answered them as best I could and exercised a lot of patience. He understood that the car wasn’t completely right, but having no driving experience he didn’t quite grasp the details, just the basics that it wasn’t steering right. He also wanted to know more about how it happened. Was I going to fast? Why had the wheels slipped? Does it happen a lot? Eventually, he started asking hypothetical questions that I had to gently shutdown by simply answering “I don’t know” or some appropriate variation thereof.

Being close to the racquetball courts was a plus, since it served as a nice distraction shortly after the incident. He was able to shed some of his adrenaline, as was I. We don’t get to play racquetball together much anymore since where I play is a long drive. He still enjoys it though.

When we started heading home, he wanted me to drive fast so we could get home quickly. But I told him we’d be taking it slow, since the car was driving quite right, it was best to take it easy and make sure we got home without any more problems. That’s exactly how it worked out.

Being in a car accident isn’t something anyone wants a part of, especially when your child is in the car with you. It’s fortunate that in this case no other cars were involved and no major damage was inflicted on the car, nor were either the boy or myself injured in any way. I guess if it has to happen, that’s the most that can be asked.

Categories
Family

Maturity

The difference a year can make, or six months anyway.

I’ve noted on a number of occasions that the boy hated hockey at the end of last year. It was due in part to a burgeoning, somewhat unfriendly, rivalry with another player and also to the fact that his skill development stagnated a bit; though, I doubt the boy would admit as much.

At this point, and it’s still early days for hockey, the boy has been enjoying the experience much more. Most interesting about this state of affairs is that the rivalry that had developed last year has continued thus far. The boy shared with me that the other kid is still taking shots at him whenever he can, knocking him down or tripping him with his stick.

The boy’s plan for dealing with the kid? Nothing. “It’s not worth it,” he told me.

He’ll occasionally retaliate by tripping him when he knows the coaches aren’t looking, but by and large he expects it now and has prepared himself. He tries extra hard not to go down, or he sees the kid coming and skates away from him. One thing I’ve noticed about the boy’s skating is that it’s improved tremendously, he’s very maneuverable, able to make sharp turns at speed, and quite fast on the ice. My guess is he can out skate the other kid. He’s also the other kid’s equal in terms of size, so he’s not intimidated by him. The fact that he takes his shots when he deems it possible speaks to that as well.

What strikes me as most promising is that he isn’t letting these circumstances cloud his playing experience this year. In yesterday’s game, he took it upon himself to help his team by playing defense and they ended up winning easily. Having not actually seen the game, I can’t say for sure about the cause and effect, but that he was willing to take responsibility for an aspect of his team’s performance was a pleasant surprise. Contrast that with last year, where he spent most of his time simply skating around the ice, seemingly uninterested in the game going on around him.

With the games worked into the schedule now, the opportunities for confrontations will diminish and that should help him even more. If he continues having success, then we’ll be well on our way to a much different ending to this year’s hockey season than last year.

Categories
Misc

This Won’t End Well

This article (via Instapundit), really, is kinda scary. In general, I’m skeptical of human ability to fully grasp the consequences of our actions when we try to break a naturally occurring phenomena, particularly where human other human behavior is concerned. The Swedes, in this article, are literally fighting Nature/ biology. All in the name of “equality.”

I think someday the word “monstrous” might be used to describe these reformers.

Categories
Family

PTC’s

Half-days of school the past couple of days. The school is going through its period of parent-teacher conferences. We met with both the kids’ teachers today right after lunch.

The lass is doing well. The most amusing moment was an anecdote the teacher related where the lass got a “True or False” question wrong, but the way the question was worded the lass was insisting she got it right. The teacher explained she was wrong, but the lass was having none of it. We see this behavior in her and the boy as well. They can become very obstinate when they’re wrong about something, insisting over and over they are, in fact, right because of some narrow definition they concoct in their little heads. It’s… annoying because they’ll suck you down to their level in a heartbeat, complete with little chants and sticking out the tongue. Hey- I’ve got to win the argument somehow.

The boy, too, is doing well. Like the lass before him, his teacher has picked up on a tick of his where his work is concerned: he does it too fast. Her words were something to the effect “It’s like he has to be the first one done.” Obviously, here at home, he’s got no one to compete with. But he does tend to rush his work and make sloppy mistakes. The vast majority of corrections the Wife and I have him make are the variety that would be either be caught quick or not happen at all if he took a little more care, particularly where writing is concerned. Here again, his teacher concurred.

But in all, good news by and large. Certainly good enough for Santa to keep them on the “Nice” list.

Categories
Football

A Novel Kickoff Replacement Idea

From PFT:

…one of the options being considered for replacing kickoffs entails giving the ball to the team that would have been kicking off at its own 30, automatically facing a fourth down and 15 yards to go. The team can then choose to punt or go for it, via fake punt or otherwise.

In other words, the kickoff would be replaced with the punt, and the onside kick would be replaced with a fourth-down conversion roughly half the distance of Ray Rice’s recent catch-and-run.

I like the spirit behind this idea. In fact, I’d been wondering about ways to improve the kickoff recently, but I was not approaching it from a safety perspective.

For anyone whose been paying attention for the past 20 years or so, touchbacks have gone way up in the pros. I’m not talking about catching the football in the endzone either. I’m talking about kickers routinely booting the ball past the endzone and out of play. The kickoff is quickly becoming the most tedious play in football as a result. While watching the recent Dallas-Philadelphia game, I think there might have been 1 return I could remember in the entire game with over 71 combined points scored! The only point of the return anymore is the opportunity for an onside kick.

I’d been thinking a solution might be to change the kick from the ground off a tee to a punt style free-kick kickoff like after a safety. I’m not a rules guru, but the problem there might be that there’s no opportunity for an onside kick scenario as the ball is not considered live after the first 10 yards.

This idea floated by Goodell has some merit to it. It preserves the salient features of the kickoff and also improves the likelihood of an actual return to a near certainty. I don’t think there’s any punter that could regularly kick the ball into the endzone with the line of scrimmage being their own 30. That’s a 70 yard punt just to the goal line. Also, my sense is the average starting position for offenses will improve to the 25 or so (I figure it’s the 20 right now.)

I don’t like that the “live ball” feature of the kickoff is lost. Practically speaking though, it’s not that big a deal. It did occasionally lead to some interesting highlights with the squib kicks or returners forgetting the ball was live and such; but those moments are pretty few and far between.

As a way to make the change of possession after a score interesting and relevant again, there’s a lot to like here. I’ll be curious to see where this goes.

Categories
Misc

Congrats’ to Adam- Sorta

Back in the day, I was a discus thrower and a decent one at that. I won a few league championships in high school and college as well as some regional meets. I qualified for the State Championships in high school and just missed being a national level qualifier in college.

But my senior year of college I met Adam Nelson. He was a freshman on the football team and a legitimate shot put phenom. He came to college having thrown 65 feet plus in high school, I believe. He won all of the major league meets his freshman year and I believe became the college’s record holder as well, managing to throw over 60′ as a freshman with the 16 pound shot, a feat almost unheard of for college freshman.

Obviously, I moved on, but I kept track of Adam and he went on to continue to set PR’s and college records in his 4 years of track in college. I believe he broke 68′ at one point during his college career, though I may have that wrong- it might have been longer.

Regardless, 68′ in the shot put is world class and it wasn’t exactly bold to predict he would be competing internationally, specifically in the Olympics. I don’t recall if he competed in any other Olympic games, but I know specifically he competed in Athens in 2004 and took the silver medal- I still remember watching him give Katie Couric a shot lesson after he’d competed. Certainly nothing to sneeze at.

Well, now comes word that the guy who beat him in those Games has been stripped of his medal for PED usage. Thus, everyone below him bumps up a notch meaning Adam is now a gold medal winner. Though, as I tweeted earlier, I’m pretty sure he’d rather have won it outright that day. Still, it’s a nice feather in his cap.

Categories
Family

Peanut Butter Diving

This is how the kids found our shelf elf this morning. It provided quite a bit of bemusement on their part.

Also, the peanut butter jar was empty. I don’t think Santa would approve of one of this elves displaying such an astonishing level of gluttony. We gave it to the dogs to lick clean yesterday, but there’s always that little bit at the bottom they can’t get. Apparently, Sparky got a peanut butter craving and just had to get at that last bit on the bottom.

We almost had a minor catastrophe. The dogs decided to investigate the elf a bit. That or they didn’t like him getting the last bit of peanut butter. So the jar was knocked over and Sparky unceremoniously dumped to the side. Hoping she hadn’t noticed I sent the lass upstairs to make her bed while I quickly fixed the situation. Unfortunately, she had noticed; but, she didn’t think too much of it I guess.

Categories
Football

Why Does Tragedy Bring Out the Stupid?

The stupidity is running fast and thick regarding Jovan Belcher. I don’t know if it started with Jason Whitlock, but it certainly didn’t stop there. After Whitlock’s silliness, Bob Costas doubled down on the stupid by giving the article and Whitlock’s words a national stage with his silly little soliloquy during the Dallas-Philadelphia game on Sunday night.

Today, we have another examples of stupid. An oped at CNN blames a “culture of manliness.” Stop laughing. This guy is serious.

As for the Costas-Whitlock axis of stupid, I’d just point out this picture of Belcher with Miss Perkins. See the size difference? The gun was merely the instrument. Belcher could have killed her in any of a number of ways. And since we’re dealing with absurd scenarios, perhaps if Miss Perkins had been a gun owner herself, she would be alive today.

This case comes back to something simple and, for most of us, unfathomable: Jovan Belcher, for some reason known only to him, decided he was going to kill his girlfriend and them himself. That a gun was used is incidental. If he hadn’t had a gun, he might have used a knife and rope, or his bare hands and slit his wrists, or any one of other equally awful ways to perform his horrific act.

While I’m at it, I came across this post via memeorandum today and, while it kind of blows up the Whitlock argument, it’s not as simple as all that. The writer’s gun ownership might push her “Ex” to purchase his own gun. To be clear, I’m not saying she’ll deserve it if it comes to that (please NO), but the notion that acts of violence are simple “a + b = no harm to me” equations are wrong. There’s always someone bigger, someone with more guns, someone with more resources, someone willing to go to horrible places the rest of us wouldn’t dream of.

Zooming out a bit though, there seems to be a cottage industry in this sort of post hoc analysis. Remember the aftermath of Gabrielle Giffords? or James Holmes and his shooting spree at the Batman Rises premiere? or the Fort Hood tragedy? or the Wisconsin Sikh Temple shooting? All horrible tragedies, all of them producing the same quality journalistic claptrap we’ve got now.

How long until these people learn (ie- pundits and journalists) that it’s impossible to account for the whims of every individual? The simple, admittedly frustrating, fact is we won’t ever really know why any of these people performed their acts. In every case, we can look and find whatever personal bogeyman we might like that makes us feel better about our world views- i.e. what “makes me right.”

Unfortunately, there’s one thing we can be sure of, that there will be a next time. And that it can’t be prevented. The other thing we can be sure of are the displays of media stupidity to follow.

Categories
Family

Empathize

With the lass in the final stages of recovering from her cold, I took the boy into school this morning by his lonesome. Well, other than me that is. It’s not like he can drive himself. Shudder.

He was quiet for the first half of the 5 minute ride in, then he piped up with “Will my sister get to see the Rise of the Guardians movie when I go, even though she didn’t read the book?”

This circumstance is one of those headaches of our own making. We try to give the kids incentives to read and one of the better ones we’ve found is to make a deal with them for reading a book and then seeing the movie. Then we can talk about the differences between the two and see which he liked better and why. All that fun parenting stuff.

The catch to this little piece of ingenuity is the difference between 3rd grade reading and 1st grade reading abilities. In a nutshell, it’s tough to expect the lass to read an 80 or 90 page kids book right now. Actually, “tough” is incorrect. She’s just not there yet.

Thus, we have a sort of free-rider problem: the boy does the work and then his sister reaps the benefits along with him.

His comment sounds a lot like feeling sorry for himself, of which I have never, and never will, approved. Rather than push back against his viewpoint; however, I opted for empathy: “Yeah, I can understand your frustration. You did the work and read the book, but in all likelihood your sister will see the movie even though she hasn’t read the book. Of course, she can’t read the book yet, but still I see what you’re saying.”

He thought for a second and then asked “When she can read better, will she have to read books before she can see the movie?”

“Of course,” I replied. “You know, as you get older, you’ll get to read much more interesting stories. Reading is actually a lot of fun- you can learn things while being entertained. It exercises your imagination and gives you something constructive to do. Wait ’til you can read The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings stories. You’ll really like those, but you’re still too young to be able to get through them.”

“Yeah,” he replied, seemingly unimpressed. But regarding his original topic, the approach mollified him. Normally, he would get more and more wound up about the “injustice” of the situation with his sister, but not this time. Perhaps it was enough to explain I understood his objections, even though it wouldn’t change the situation. Rather than attacking him for feeling sorry for himself and putting himself on the defensive, the different tact served to defuse his frustrations.

I’m not sure if this represents maturity on his part, or mine.

Categories
Family

‘Tis the Season

Well, by way of updating the boy’s status, in all likelihood the second round of headaches he had were related to a head cold he came down with. Even better, the lass also came down with something. Yesterday, both of them were running mild fevers and were just generally lethargic and miserable.

But then thy boy seemed to start coming around come dinner time and this morning he continued his improvement. The lass is still a bit feverish, we’re hoping a good night’s sleep will fix her up.

The lass participated in hockey yesterday, but not the boy. Neither participated in hockey today, although I took the boy out for archery practice this morning since he seemed to generally be on the upswing. He enjoyed it.

Anyway, that’s the situation here for the moment. Seems like all of their friends have been coming up sick lately, it was just their turn when the wheel came around this time.

Categories
Family

Sparky Returns

Not the most creative debut spot for the season, but certainly a festive one. The candy cane is a new wrinkle.

The kids are already spilling their guts to him.