Future Poltergeist

I love my reading lists and this one came from an unexpected place. The whole article is worth reading but I think I most want to focus on the books that the author wants kicked out of high schools.

Back in 2014, right before the Sochi Olympics, I did a list of suggested winter Olympic sports. I put those suggestions out, one by one, on Facebook but I didn't have them all collected anywhere. I have since found the word document that I used while brainstorming the list and I thought I'd put the suggestions here for posterity. 1. Paint ball on ice 2. Competitive polar bearing 3. Capture the flag 4. Ice sculpture racing 5. Snow fort construction 6. Winter bike commuting 7. Dog sledding (actual suggestion) 8. Getting a toddler dressed and into a car seat 9. Ice yachting 10. Snowshoe long jump 11. 4 X 100 Driveway shovel relay 12. Snow ball fight Some of these are obviously jokes but there are some that I like quite a bit.

As a snapshot of where he is, here are some of the things LL wants for his birthday: mirrored sunglasses a nerf dart gun/suction cup darts a builder playset (I'm not sure what this is) colored foam, like the kind with colored paper that makes it stick together (?) NOT a younger brother (maybe a younger sister) after explaining the long odds against a younger sister, he said that he simply wanted help making one out of a paper bag a fun day

The other night the FP Gal and I were talking about classic literature that we read in high school. This conversation was started because I was talking about my interactions with my classmates in my college literature course. My class has been sub-divided into smaller groups of five or six and my group consists of several young high schoolers, mostly women. Their approach to the poems and stories that we've been reading is very different than mine. This is understandable and not at all meant as a criticism. An 18 year old must have a very different perspective on fundamental issues like death and marriage. Anyway, this lead me to talk with the FP Gal about what 'classic' stuff we had read while in high school. I mentioned that I'd happened to read 'Death of a Salesmen' twice and didn't feel the need to read it ever again. She calmly told me that it's probably a piece that isn't meant for high school. We both agreed that it might be valuable for me ...

The musical education continues apace. This morning I played this gem for Relia and tried to explain to her what I loved about it: I spoke about how smooth the music is. And indeed, when people speak of music being 'silky', this is what they mean. The strings and the back up singers all help, but George Michael's voice is simply gorgeous here. I then played her the original, which I also love, but maybe not as much as this recreation. As I was finding that, I found a version from Adele: I like this too, but not as much as the others. It's faster, which can be ok, but doesn't do the song any favors here. Adele also uses that modern thing where singers must 'shake' their voices. (If I was smarter about this, I'd know the term I mean. Tremelo? Or am I making that up?) My personal feeling is that a little bit of that goes a long way. The industry feeling seems to be 'if a little bit is great, then a lot of bit would be even greater'. Anyway, ...

Me to Leo: No, no, no. Your daily schedule is not so busy that you don't have time to put on underwear.

Lately Relia has been working me to listen to more of her music. Her purpose for this is so that I'll let her play the radio while we drive, but I'm trying to give it deeper meaning. I remember various times that I tried to bridge a gap with my parents by impressing them with the music that I'd fallen in love with and I want to give her that same opportunity. So far...it's not really moving that fast. She is big into Taylor Swift and a handful of other people that seem a little 'flavor of the day' to me. She's convinced that Taylor Swift is 'country' music and that may have once been true. But when I hear Tay-Tay, I hear pure pop music. Which is fine. I like pop music. But it ain't country music. The other day while I was driving (and controlling the music!) this song by Morrisey came on:  She called it country music. Well...maybe not. I asked her what made it 'country' and she said that she could hear the guitars. Ok, fair enough...

We're working our way past Daylight Saving Time and it's not been easy. Lately, LL has been getting up sometime in the middle of the night and going downstairs. We don't know exactly when he gets up but sometimes he has made changes to his environment, like bring his clock downstairs. Last night I woke up about 4a (3a for my personal body clock) and I found him downstairs watching TV. I shooed him upstairs and back to bed. From what I can tell, he went back to sleep pretty quickly, which makes me think he'd been up for some time. Unfortunately, I couldn't get back to sleep for at least an hour or so. Eventually, I made it back to bed. The FP Gal left around 7a and told me what time it was. I got out of bed around 7:20 and (incredibly) no one else was up. I had the whole place to myself! Relia got up about ten minutes later and then LL. This made him late for school but that's no biggie. DF was still in bed at 8:30! All of our schedules are messed up. Which.....

One thing that I was very curious about with having children, is what kind of things that my children would just 'get' that I didn't at their age. This happened with me and my parents, most obviously with space travel. I grew up with rockets being a common thing. I literally never lived in a world where man had not walked on the moon. When it came to aspects like gravity in outer space, I feel like I just 'got' it in a way they didn't. (This isn't to suggest that my parents are stupid, by any means. We simply grew up in different times and with different things happening.) Anyway, the FP Gal just showed Relia this video: Relia saw it and simply said, "Yeah, I knew it would do that." Either she just wants to look cool in front of her old parents, or she has grown up with people in zero gravity and just 'gets' how things operate there. In any case, I think that the video is cool.

It's been some time since I've written about the kids. There is a simple reason for this: I'm not sure how to do it anymore. The older they get, the more worried I am that I'll over-share and embarrass them. They probably don't want people to be able to search their childhoods when they're older. That...seems fair to me. The worry that I'll do that has made it hard to write. That's one of the big reasons that this blog has become semi-abandoned. But I'm trying to work past that. If Relia wants to, she can look back at her first couple of years and read about what was happening and how her parents dealt with that. DF can to some extent. LL can't at all. In many ways this is the classic third child syndrome, just moved from baby albums to blogs. It's too late for me to go back and write more about the previous four years, of course, but I'll try to throw a snapshot in here. LL is now almost five. He's smart as a whip and constantly...

List found here . I'm trying to figure out if I can resist this or not. I've already read nine of the books. It wouldn't hurt me to read the other 15. Hmmm, will have to think about this... The list, for those who don't click through: The Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald Moby Dick - Melville To Kill a Mockingbird - Lee Huckleberry Finn - Twain Mason & Dixon - Pynchon American Psycho - Ellis Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck Underworld - Delillo Lolita - Nabakov U.S.A. - Dos Passos Invisible Man - Ellison Blood Meridian - McCarthy Light in August - Faulkner Absalom! Absalom! - Faulkner Rabbit, Run - Updike Infinite Jest - DFW Adventures of Augie March - Bellow  Gentlemen Prefer Blonds - Loos Beloved - Morrison Kavalier and Clay - Chabon Freedom - Franzen Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Diaz These Dreams of You - Erickson The Flamethrowers - Kushner My, my, that's a tempting list.

Back in 2014, I put together this post in which I figured out how the medal to population ratio played out during the Olympics.  I'm now doing the same thing for the Rio Olympics.  From the Sochi description: Anyway, the idea was to sort the medals by population of the country. Therefore smaller countries would get more credit per medal. This makes some sense. The larger the country, the easier it should be to find an elite individual. So I decided to crunch some numbers. Note: I'm going to figure medals per million people. My population numbers are from Wikipedia and I'm simply hoping that no one cared enough to mess with this info. Also, I rounded to the nearest million so there may be some messiness with the numbers. Also, I'm not doing the entire medal count. Just the top ten, with a few extras that are special. This time I'll do the top thirteen.  I have my reasons. 13. China - 19.66 medals per million people.  The Chinese did very well in this ...

How could I not click on a link called 'The 10 Best Books About the Olympics' ?  (Btw, I think I've read precisely zero of these.)

In the summer before the London Olympics started, I 'live-blogged' a coffee table book about past Olympics.  It was wildly successful.  The FP Gal even said she was enjoying it.  The posts are findable under the 'Olympics' label but I'm going to put them all in one place. 1896-1906 is here . 1908-1924 is here . 1928-1932 is here . 1936 and 1948 are here . 1952 and 1956 are here . 1960 and 1964 are here . 1968 and 1972 are here . 1976 and 1980 are here . 1984 and 1988 are here . 1992-1996 is here . 1998-2004 is here . These were a bunch of fun to put together.

When I put DF to bed, he asks me questions before we turn on his music.  Tonight, his last question went like this: DF: What does a cowboy wedding look like. Me: ...uh, I don't know. DF: (thinking) Would the pinata be shaped like a horse? Me: ... DF: Maybe with a crown on it.  (pause)  And a cape? Me: I have no idea. I love the way his mind works, but I won't pretend that I understand it.

The Harvard Public Health Review is calling for the Rio Olympics to be delayed or moved to a different city , and I'm not so sure that they're wrong.  The problem is the Zika virus.  Rio is right in the heart of the problem area.  As the review points out, not only is it a risk for the people traveling there, but when they leave, they will spread that risk to (literally) the entire world. Which leads to a simple question:  But for the Games, would anyone recommend sending an extra half a million visitors into Brazil right now?    Of course not: mass migration into the heart of an outbreak is a public health no-brainer.  And given the choice between accelerating a dangerous new disease or not—for it is impossible that Games will slow Zika down—the answer should be a no-brainer for the Olympic organizers too.  Putting sentimentality aside, clearly the Rio 2016 Games must not proceed. So, what happens?  I don't believe that the IOC wil...

During the Opening Ceremonies for the 2012 Olympics in London, there was a sequence that I really enjoyed.  It was titled 'Pandemonium' and it was a kind of history of the Industrial Revolution. The visuals were great, especially the rings at the end, but what really got me was the music.  I simply loved it.  But there was a problem.  I couldn't find it to buy, anywhere.  I quickly tracked down the artist, Underworld, and the name of the music, 'And I Will Kiss', but I couldn't buy it.  I couldn't find it as a stand alone single.  Couldn't find it on an Underworld album.  It just wasn't available. Well, that's not completely true.  It was on the soundtrack for the Olympics, called 'Isles of Wonder', but iTunes didn't have that either.  Amazon didn't either.  I was stuck.  Until I happened to try a couple of weeks ago and found that Amazon had somehow let some used copies slip through the embargo.  Less than $5 later...

I had a wonderful call today.  The admin called, and after I confirmed her name, I asked for her phone number.  She started giving me a set of numbers and then stopped.  "Oh", she said, "I almost gave you my home number."  I laughed and said that the office one would probably be better.  She continued, "If you called my home number, you would have ended up speaking to my senile mother.  And you wouldn't want that."  I laughed again.  "And then I would have gotten home and she would have said [thick German accent] 'I had ze strangest call today...'". Lady, you made my day.

Tonight, I read to Leo.  We read 'Make Way for Ducklings'.  This book has made a reappearance at our house as it has been in storage for some time.  I have not read it with Leo before and I wasn't sure if he had read it all.  He assured me that he has, in fact, read it with mama. Fair enough. We got to this page: And I said, "Doesn't he look nice?" Leo said he did not.  Again, I asked him if he had read this before.  The policeman (who is named Michael) is awfully nice.  Later on in the book he stops traffic for the ducks and even calls in a car from Central to help direct traffic for them.  This is a nice policeman. When I asked him if had read it before, he assured me that he had.  So I asked him what happens later on.  He pointed to the night stick and said, 'he takes that and stabs the ducks'.  Whaaaat?  I told him that isn't quite how I remember it. We read on.  Sure enough, there is no stabbing.  The po...

I almost always enjoy my visits to historical fiction but I don't go there often enough.  This list from Hugh Hewitt looks like a very good one.  He emphasizes a kind of reverse chronology approach, which probably compels the reader to keep asking 'what caused that?'.  He also emphasizes series by authors who really know what they're doing.  Looks like good stuff.