You'll recall that the Batpup has been recognising car logos, which is pretty impressive for a three-and-a-half-year-old. I thought of a game we can play on longish car trips to replace the Rainbow Game1: Car Bingo. You print out one bingo card for each player, then someone calls out car models as they pass and the game works like ordinary bingo, only with automotive graphic design instead of legs-eleven and two-fat-ladies.
Quick and dirty web development: it's not just for grownups!
1 They've largely grown out of the Rainbow Game, but it goes like this: first, find a red car. Then an orange one. And so on down the expanded version of the spectrum: red, orange, yellow, green, light blue, dark blue, purple, black, silver, white and brown. We usually only start when we see an orange car going past, because they're so rare; purple is tricky, because so many dark blue cars pretend to be purple until you see them up close, and brown is very rare indeed, which is why tan and beige are considered acceptable substitutes. It's nicely suspenseful without being competitive, which works well with our munchkins. I find myself playing it when I'm out walking...
- Whack!
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etfb- December 30th, 2008
Been thinking about this one for a while. This is a post -- a rant, maybe -- about parenting, so I'm prepared for the very real possibility that I'll be offending some of my readership. Therefore, let me start by laying my cards on the table: I think you're all appallingly bad parents, every one of you, and your children are hideously deformed meat beasts... except for a few of you, who are excellent and have stunningly gorgeous Small People. But the rest? Osamas bin Laden infested with tiny Gollums, the lot of 'em. So feel free to be offended; it's your right.
Now, with that disclaimer out of the way, on with the rant.
A friend of mine posted a while back that she strongly dislikes parents who don't spank their children. My first reaction was probably unprintable, although it had Darwinian aspects to it, ie "feel free to do whatever you like to disadvantage your kids; it'll give mine a leg up in the coming Apocalypse". But then I remembered how I used to titter at the freakazoid hippy parents I knew in my ill-spent and frequently-wallopped youth, the ones who couldn't bear to so much as raise their squeaky voices as their snotty offspring ran roughshod over them. Not giving your kids a good thumping every now and then, it seemed pretty clear to my ten-year-old mind, was a good way to produce feral lunatics; BAD idea. And after all, I got my share of whacks with the cane, the belt or the back of my Dad's hand, and I'm no worse off for it (apart from the twitching and the nightmares and the brain damage, but I lived in Albury in the 1970s so I know what to blame for those). Seriously: it wasn't a problem for me, then.
But opinions change. For example, I used to think the Windows 95 UI looked pretty schmick, and now... not so much. We don't hit our kids -- well, not when we're in our right minds -- and we feel strongly that it would be the Wrong Thing to do so under any circumstances. Even an ear tweak is right out, thought admittedly I had to have that explained in very loud and unambiguous monosyllables after the first and last time I delivered one to the Elder Daughter of DOOOM, because it hadn't occurred to me that it might be a problem. But I know better now. Anyway.
I had to think for a long time about why hitting is bad, especially considering that a fair amount of shouting is par for the course around here when the EDoD is being the Entitlement Queen of Hell and I'm tired and shagged out after a long day's Javascripting. And the best I can come up with is this:
I don't hit my children for exactly the same reason I don't hit my wife.
That's pretty much it.
I've mentioned before that I dislike using the word "children" in reference to my own family members, even though it never bothered me to be called a child back when I was one. Ageism is the last great legal discrimination, sticking around when even Atheists are starting to demand equal rites, and I'm acutely aware of how much of it my 11-going-on-22-year-old daughter has to put up with. Adults will quite happily ignore her when she speaks to them, even when her grammar and vocabulary are clearly superior to theirs (which is about two thirds of the time, even in "elitist" Canberra) and there are a whole bunch of things she is physically and emotionally capable of that the law or convention says she can't do, like travelling on a plane alone or making her own purchases without parental supervision. She's a vassal, basically, and it irritates her, and by osmosis me too.
So the ideal I work from is that she deserves the same rights and respect that I'd afford an adult. Admittedly, she's more like a drunk and disorderly adult at times, because at age 11 she's not always completely rational or informed, but coming back to that point I made above: I wouldn't hit my wife, even if she were drunk and irrational, so why should I hit my daughter? It's a change in viewpoint, a different way of looking at the world. Once you see it like that, you need some fairly heavy-duty self-deception to continue waling away at your kids. Slap your kids for disobedience? Fine, then do it your spouse too. Otherwise, not so much.
The difficulty is that kids who get spanked are more easily controlled, and since we treat our Small People with respect they don't always technically earn, there are times when they get the better end of the deal and we get the worse. That means we have to compensate: we spend much more time reasoning with the EDoD and the Batpup than we would if we could just hurt them to make them compliant. Often, this doesn't work, and it's a rare week when I don't feel like introducing Ms EDoD to Mr Fist. But I don't. It would be wrong.
Along with that, there's the emotional component: I want to hit her, when I'm angry at her, because it would feel good. That is so utterly the wrong reason that I'm not even going to dignify it with more paragraph.
Life is made trickier by her absurdly high intelligence, but considerably easier by her emotional intelligence: she has approximately the same ability to compose herself and reign in her emotions as I has developed by about age 25; she is quite, quite remarkable, and I wish I could film her doing it because you'd be astonished, even those rare ones of you with the good quality munchkins. If she and I are arguing, it usually turns out that she's right and I'm wrong, so I have learned stupid amounts of humility. But when she's wrong and she realises it, she's better than me (and most people I know) at switching her ego into neutral and, if not quite admitting it, certainly removing the self-righteousness from her emotional makeup and letting herself calm right down.
So what we have is neither the cowed, defeated, often-spanked extreme, nor the undisciplined hippy egomaniac opposite extreme, but something else, right off the continuum: an Elder Daughter who responds (eventually) to reason, will not allow her emotions to override her brain for too long, and who is better equipped for adulthood than I was when I was twice her age. And her younger brother and sister, growing up with the benefit of our hindsight and experimentation, will no doubt be even more stable and well-prepared. This, I think, makes the occasional screaming fits worth it, and means I'm not going to be splashing out and buying any extra bullwhips and cats-o'-nine-tails any time soon.
So: non-spanking parent, and proud of it. Other parents are entitled to their own views, but I know we're right about this one.
- Nesting
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- etfb
- June 9th, 2008
Just for something different, a photo-essay (ooh! wanky!) about the weekend. It started with a celebration of our Demiversary, involving much icecream (well, frozen custard, but KISS) and continued with fireworks at Gerrie's and a day of nesting. We now have curtains in the living room (nearly done except for some extra fiddling to get them to sit properly) and the family room (half done; awaiting hems) and a complete set of woollen curtains in the EDoD's room, which she loves. She also loves the newly-discovered floor: I helped her tidy up, because I figured that one explanation for her recent shoutiness might be that she didn't have a place to retreat to when her younger siblings (or older parents) got too painful. Now she does, and it's done wonders: she was just gorgeous today, much more relaxed than she has been. I tidied the BatPup's room too -- less of a chore, since she doesn't have her big sister's talent for chaos -- and she's getting the same benefits.
Of course this means I got nothing much else done, but that's life. Better to help my family stay sane, I think.
- In The Beginning
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- etfb
- May 25th, 2008
In the beginning, in the evening, after the Mothers and Fathers had put the tearing, screaming, demanding, loud little horrors down to sleep on their beds of straw in the cosiest end of the cave, they sat around the sputtering fire and tried to decide what to do. Civilised warfare was still many thousands of years in their future, so they didn't know the term "shell shocked", but it's what they were. "Oh my god," said Grarg, the oldest and scarred-est of the Fathers. ("Oh my what?" another asked. "An idea I'm working on; I'll explain later" Grarg whispered, hoping not to lose his audience with an irrelevant aside.) "Clearly," Grarg continued, "we can't go on like this. These children are going to run us ragged. We barely have time to hunt a mammoth, kill it, drag it home, cut the fur off, hack off chunks and eat them, without those children running around, asking questions, demanding to know, why did the mammoth fall over, what are our ropes made of, how does the knife cut the meat, why don't we warm the meat over the fire before we eat it... It's insane. We can't live if we have to spend all our time answering these questions! What are we going to do?"
The ragged crowd fell silent. What indeed? Still dazed from the day's endless interrogations from their three-foot-high inquisitors, they could find nothing to say.
From the cave mouth, a twig snapped. "Bear!" someone grunted, and lunged for a spear. But instead of a shaggy beast-mountain with hungry jaws, into the circle of light came... a man. Well, sort of a man. Impossibly old, at least forty summers, wrinkled and stooped, with a walking stick and a mane of white hair. His eyes glinted, even without the firelight catching them. In a faint, piping voice that all strained to hear, he spoke:
"You fear for your minds, you mothers and fathers? You fear your little children and their endless curiosity? Their questions, their insatiable thirst for knowledge. You would silence them?"
The assembled parents murmured their assent. Silence indeed! What a joy! What a dream! Grarg spoke for them: "Do you know of a way, O wizened sage? Can you save us from our own flesh and blood who threaten to drown us in questions? Share your wisdom, snow-hair!"
The old man said nothing, only reached into the scrappy leather bag he wore around his shoulder. He took out a bundle of ill-tanned hides, beaten thin and bound with thin leather strips. He threw it to the ground for all to see, and with a triumphant gleam in those eerie eyes he shouted one word: "Schooling!"— * —
After the Mothers and Fathers had finished dining on the old man's paltry flesh and sucked the last of the marrow from his bones, they leafed through his collection of pages. Full of knowledge, it was, all trapped on the page in scratches and scribbles. A map — although they knew not yet of such a thing — for a million children's lives full of sitting sullenly still, "learning" only what was taught, remaining silent, remaining obedient. Doing what they were told. "Horrible, horrible," muttered Grarg. "No amount of parental pain could be worthy of such punishment. Let our children drive us mad with their endless, insatiable thirst for wonder; we may wish them dead a thousand times, but we'd never wish them schooled."
Around them, the firelight flickered. The Mothers and Fathers may have been desperate in many ways, but they still had some standards.
And now for something completely different...
- Lies To Children
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- etfb
- May 14th, 2008
From Paul Graham, Lies We Tell Kids:We arrive at adulthood with a kind of truth debt. We were told a lot of lies to get us (and our parents) through our childhood. Some may have been necessary. Some probably weren't. But we all arrive at adulthood with heads full of lies.
This has got me thinking about the lies we tell our munchkins. I'm not sure there are any - certainly, keeping them out of school saves them from the worst of it - but we need to monitor more carefully. I'd rather my kids were confused than pacified, generally.
There's never a point where the adults sit you down and explain all the lies they told you. They've forgotten most of them. So if you're going to clear these lies out of your head, you're going to have to do it yourself.
There are some lies to children that are necessary. The one about electrons orbiting nuclei like planets orbiting the sun is necessary to get the hang of chemical valence without getting bogged down in quantum physics, which is a science that's probably still in the four-humours-and-philosopher's-stone stage of its development. But unlike my school teachers, it would be nice to be told "this is an approximation, you need to pretend it's the truth for now and if you like we can cover the reality after the lesson is over".
This reminds me of Alan C Dexter, my maths teacher in year eight or nine. We were going through some algebra on the blackboard, presumably simplifying equations or somesuch. I asked if such-and-such an equation could be reduced down to so-and-so. Mr Dexter looked at me, and looked at the board, and said, "Hmmm! Good question!" and proceeded to do some working out on the board. I was dazzled by the stuff he was doing - he was using techniques we hadn't been exposed to, and using shortcuts I'd never seen. I only grasped a tenth of it at best. When he'd finished, he said, "No, that's not equivalent - but it was a very good try!" He turned around to erase his working and I shouted out, "Hang on! What was that you just did there?" He turned back: "You're not up to that yet. Don't get sidetracked." And he rubbed it all out.
If he'd said, "It's called calculus, and it's complicated. Come back after class and I'll show you, but don't worry if it's a bit advanced," then I would have come back, and I would have learned something. But he was convinced that kids aged 14 don't get to learn stuff that's meant for kids aged 16, so he shut me down.
Which isn't quite about Lies To Children, but it's close. Maybe the connecting thread is: treating children like they're retarded and useless is foolish. The fact that it's frequently also a self-fulfilling prophecy -- that's just poetic justice for the parents who'll one day need to rely on the next generation to change their bedpans and administer their pills...
- Taboos
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- etfb
- March 31st, 2008
I don't have all that many taboos, but I have a very old one and quite a recent one.
The old taboo is: I won't allow my voice to be recorded when I'm singing. I didn't used to sing much at all until I joined the SCA, where I discovered (a) it was a good way to perform the stuff I was writing, and (b) apparently my voice didn't sound all that much like a jackass being rogered with a chainsaw during a torrential downpour of furniture. Joining choir made that easier, since choir is an excellent way to improve one's pitching and breath control, and also a good place to meet an alto with whom one can produce babies who need to be sung to sleep most nights. But being recorded: nuh-uh. Won't, won't, won't. I have no idea why; the very idea gives me the flimmering hoobies. This, incidentally, is why there's no CD of the songs in The Known Words, and won't be unless I can find volunteers to help me produce it, with me as a silent partner.
The new taboo is: I hate using the words "kids" or "children" to refer to the Elder Daughter of DOOOM, the BatPup and the Boy Wonder. Somehow, they just feel belittling and ageist. I don't mind calling them my babies, my munchkins, my monkeys or my son and daughters, but I''ll generally employ some remarkable circumlocutions rather than use the mundane terms. I prefer the term "small people" generally, because there's entirely too much age discrimination and there are times that even the most loving parents seem to treat their own kids (excuse me) as idiot slave-monkeys. So I guess I'm striking a blow for the last great fight for equality.
So how about you lot, eh? What are your taboos?
- Linked Lists
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- etfb
- March 12th, 2008
- It's March 12th, the seventy second day of the year. That means I've written at least one entry in this LJ every day for ten weeks and two days. Can I keep it up? Only if I keep my standards low. A YouTube here, a funny BatPup story here, pretty soon you're talking real volume...
- Speaking of the BatPup: she's three! It's been three years since she arrived (rotated and waving) and made my already amply interesting life even more interesting. She's utterly lovely, and I hope to see her have many, many more birthdays.
- Speaking of my munchkins and their futures: Lockhart's Lament (note: PDF) is an article lamenting the criminal incompetence of mathematics teachers. It's full of so much Hell Yeah that I don't know where to begin quoting it. Any parent who can read that and not try really really hard to find a way to homeschool their kids is obviously brainwashed.
- Speaking of cultural inanity: is anyone else following Questionable Content and being irritated at Dora and Fae right now? Short precis: Marten used to have some unconsummated mutual sexual tension going on with Fae, who was too mixed up to commit; eventually he hooked up with Dora, and recently Fae had an unexpected evening with Dora's lothario brother Sven. Now Fae is feeling guilty for having -- I don't know, cheated? -- on Marten! Marten is cool with it, but Dora is convinced she only did it to get back at him. As deense says: omgwtfbbq??? Fae is chattel how, exactly? I guess it's a sign of moderately good writing that these characters are shitting me so much. Stop reading it? Never!
- Speaking of comics: today's PartiallyClips is amusing again. I bet a lot of people will send the link to Pharyngula.
- And I can't think of a segue from there, so I guess I'm done.
- Reading The Situation
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- etfb
- March 9th, 2008
Parenthood is not all roses. One of the downsides is that you don't get to give the buggers back if you've got something better to do. Case in point: last night, I took the BatPup with me to the Newcomer's Feast. That she was having fun is indisputable; the problem is that she was having fun playing on the playground equipment two hundred metres from the feast hall, and having no fun at all in the hall itself. Since I was there to spend time with people, maybe sing some songs and generally socialise, this was a Non Optimal Scenario. Around an hour into the feast I had to take her home because she was so sleepy -- but she still stayed awake until after 11, so I didn't get anything else done that night.
This afternoon I took The Beloved's advice and spent some quality time with her. I sat on a rare clean patch of carpet with a BatPup on my lap and a basket of books by my side, and just read to her for about half an hour. Later she went happily off to sleep, without any of the histrionics of last night.
This happy ending has a twist. She woke up again and came downstairs about dinner time. As it happens, the time off from constant pupsitting had let us do some useful stuff, so I was feeling much less stressed about having my spare time eaten. And the earlier Daddy/Daughter bonding bore fruit: she was chirpy, cheerful and amazingly affectionate. While I was making the beds upstairs, she was chatting away, reading books to herself and being affectionate and lovely. Any time I asked her to move from one bed to another, she would hop up without delay and say "Of course! Sorry!" with the cheerfullest smile. It's nearly 11 and she's still awake, but that's OK, because she's lovely.
I try to be a good Daddy, but sometimes it's my daughters who remind me how. Now: pardon me, I have to switch this computer off and go read my daughter to sleep. I anticipate it will take all of ten minutes.
- Demiversary: T minus 90 and counting
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- etfb
- March 7th, 2008
The earliest date that I'm sure I was referred to as "Bat Dad" was at a family Christmas party on what was probably Saturday 21 December 2002. The Elder Daughter of DOOOOM was, at that date, one thousand, nine hundred and ninety three days old. If you take the date and add another 1,993 days, you get Thursday 5 June 2008, which is therefore our demiversary: the date upon which I will have been a Daddy for exactly half my daughter's life. So on Friday the sixth of June, when I will have been her Daddy for longer than I wasn't, I plan to take the EDoD out for celebratory frozen custard, because that's a pretty good milestone, I reckon.
- Unexpected
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- etfb
- March 6th, 2008
I'm frequently heard to speculate that if the me of ten years ago met the me of today he wouldn't know me. Quite apart from the hair (which was on its way out before I was old enough to vote) and the beard (which at least runs in the family) there's the small matter of munchkins.
On the one hand, I always knew I'd never breed, because I'd be a crap father.
On the other hand, I never got a tattoo, because I could never imagine having an opinion that would last that long.
So some time around December 2002, someone started calling me BatDad (and also incidentally Bum Head) and now I'm a Daddy to threeevilgenerally tolerablewonderful small people.
Other things I would never have expected:- My wife fits a lot of the demographics for a hippie loony. She's an ex-vegan, and we still eat more lentils in a week than I did in my first 25 years of life. She's a big fan of co-sleeping, unattended childbirth, baby wearing (see LJ icon), home schooling, organic gardening, switching lights off when you're not in the room, and all that other weirdo shit. And consequently, now so am I. Especially the co-sleeping and baby wearing, because bottles and prams are the two biggest pains in the arse of the typical new parents' lives, and we're happy without them.
- A large proportion of my friends are also breeders. I have to concentrate really really hard not to spend the whole time at parties talking about babies. (Speaking of which: frodolover and unique_id: sorry about the horribly babycentric birthday party! Let's try some socialising some time where the only people being infantile are us!)
- I can actually understand why friends who have kids suddenly disappear from the social circles they used to orbit. It's because babies are (a) fun, (b) distracting and (c) psychic vampires from hell. I have to force myself to socialise - I enjoy it once I'm out, but getting out is like scaling the Matterhorn in cast iron thongs.
- Permanent jobs are more attractive than contracts, because I can plan ahead better.
- IVs and Festival are less attractive than being at home, because lack of sleep is no longer a minor obstacle to be borne stoically on the road toward fun.
- I need a whole lot more sleep than I'm getting.
- The Bald and the Beautiful
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- etfb
- January 30th, 2008
The BatPup had a go at her hair with the scissors today, for the second time in a couple of weeks. Last time we got her to a hairdresser in time for some remedial snippage, but this time the patient was too far gone, and we had to amputate. The result was, as one would expect knowing the BatPup, utterly gorgeous, if somewhat disconcerting. The Beloved is worried that people will come up and ask how her chemotherapy is going, whereas I think she looks fetching - but then I've had a thing for bald chicks since Star Trek - The Motionless Picture.
She's been somewhat painful to drag off to sleep lately (the BatPup, this is, not Lieutenant Ilia). The theory is that she's feeling somewhat crowded out by the Boy Wonder, and wants to maximise her Daddy time in the evenings by not going to bed. Usually, she wants lots of stories, and her favourite genre of story at the moment is The Three BatPups1.
The Three BatPups are the daughters of the Beloved and me in an alternate universe. Everything else is the same, except that instead of having one daughter in 2005, the alter-we had triplets; and, lacking inspiration to come up with three names, our other selves simply gave all three triplets the same name. This, and the fact that they went on to have another baby at the same time we had the Boy Wonder, would appear to be the only fantasy elements. Apart from that, the stories are quite mundane: The Three BatPups and the Boring Day, The Three BatPups and the Playground, The Three BatPups and the New Bunk Bed, and so on. Very plain, very simple... but she loves them, and the Beloved tells me she'll often be heard burbling the stories to herself in the car the next day.
I seem to have developed a knack for telling stories, which is useful because she's definitely developed a knack for demanding them. My other favourite genre is the What BatPup Will Be Like As A Grown-Up story, but she usually only goes for that once every couple of nights. I told her one of the Boy Wonder as a grown-up, working as a vet the day a lady brings a real live genetically engineered griffin in for treatment. (Naturally, the Boy Wonder phones Daddy, who is an expert in heraldic matters, and is told that griffins eat footballs and egg sandwiches with worms, so it turns out OK.) The plots are never complex, although I try to introduce the right kind of repetition into them so they have a bit of a flow to them.
My Dad used to tell us stories when I was in single-digits. Sometimes there were serials - I think our favourite was the "It's That Boy Again" Boy - and they were the ones we loved best and I still remember. Later on, Dad got into telling his most popular series, Walter the Jellybean Dragon, and he's written a bunch down that I will attempt to introduce my munchkins to when they're older. I seem to have inherited his skill there, at least in part, which is unexpected but useful.
It's a bit like being a seal. They have a knack for balancing bouncy balls on their noses, but how would they know that if they weren't mammalnapped and put in a circus? It's a natural aptitude they would never discover in a million years in the wild. Same for me with telling kids' stories: if I'd stayed agaybutch bachelor, I'd never have realised I could do that. Lucky, really.
I like being a Daddy.
1 It's actually The Three _____s, where '_____' is her name, but I prefer to keep mention of her name to an absolute minimum on the public-facing internet. If you go looking you can find her given name at least, because I've mentioned it in the past, but the less I repeat it the less GoogleJuice it will get.
- Word, Brother!
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- etfb
- January 29th, 2008
Kottke speaks the truth about the reason we never get anything done any more.
- Simple Yet Informative!
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- etfb
- January 25th, 2008
- Talking To Strangers
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- etfb
- January 17th, 2008
An excellent post from Bruce Schneier:I think "don't talk to strangers" is just about the worst possible advice you can give a child. Most people are friendly and helpful, and if a child is in distress, asking the help of a stranger is probably the best possible thing he can do.
So the question is: what do we teach the BatPup and the Boy Wonder? I can see both sides, although I'm tending more toward agreeing with this article. As one commenter said: "Fearing strangers is less scary than fearing friends and family members."
- Hey, That's Neat! Let's Meet The Meat!
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- January 5th, 2008
From Mark Jason Dominus:
Riley informed me that "You can't eat guinea pigs! They're animals, not food."
"Sure you can," I said. "Meat is made from animals."
Riley got this big grin on her face, the one that preschoolers get when they know that the adults are teasing them, and said "Nawww!"
"Yes," I said. "Meat comes from animals."
Riley shook her head. She knew I was joking.
A father's story of introducing the origins of food to his pre-school-age daughter. Her reaction to the fish is my favourite bit.
- Censorship Part 2a
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- etfb
- January 3rd, 2008
aunty_del asks:I wholeheartedly agree that censorship in general is a bad thing, but why are you so determined to opt out of this? You made a comment previously that it would be better, not worse, for EDoD - why? I hadn't heard about this until I read your previous post, but the worst I could say was that it appeared to be a King Canute project dressed up with motherhood statements.
Here's an anecdote:
Last night, the BatPup wanted me to tell her a story about her when she grows up. Often I tell the one about her getting a job as a selenologist (a geologist on the moon) and joining in the first near-lightspeed colony ship to Epsilon Eridani, but last night I came up with a different one. In this one, she was grown up and in a polyamorous relationship with three other people named A____, M____ and L___ (hint: amongst our friends are
nessbrain, baroquestar and lauredhel). She and M____ got pregnant around the same time and each had a daughter -- hers was Rose and the other was Claire, or vice versa, I can't remember. I don't recall how it all went, but it all took place on a farm somewhere and there was a lot of living happily ever after in between changing cloth nappies.Now, I have no reason to believe my younger daughter will grow up to be polyamorous, any more than she'll grow up to study moon rocks and take a skyhook to work from the Sri Lankan spaceport. But she might. And if she did, she might want to read the venerable old
piece of tripepoly manifesto, The Ethical Slut, to see what her Grand Da's generation had to say on the matter (and laugh). Online, of course, because only old farts read books.But if Net Nannies are mandatory, she won't be able to, because that's got a naughty word in it..
Similarly, if she's ever sexually assaulted (where's my machete?) she might want to frequent whatever forums exist for discussion of sexual abuse. Or maybe she'll be gay, or bi, or into BDSM, or contemplating a trip to West Virginia or Scunthorpe or Arsenal. Too bad, so sad, why not watch Big Brother XXXVII instead?
Censorship is bad. Censorship removes the opportunity for sentient human beings to connect with other sentient human beings in ways that they want to, and should be allowed to. My son and daughters will live, if Conroy and Fielding and the rest have their way, in a world in which nobody has the wrong kind of fun or loves the wrong kind of people. And they'll define what "wrong" is. Just like no GST ever stays at its lowest percentage forever, no net nanny software will remain at its most liberal setting. Installing it is the hard part; once it's there, it's a far easier matter to "tweak" it and "adjust" it and make it "work properly".
I do not want my son and daughters to have to grow up in a world whose information flow is controlled by people I despise. Currently, the information flow is not controlled, and that's the way it should be. If that means that some people are being abused, well fair enough: with great power comes great responsibility, to quote a recent birthday boy. They're not being abused because of the internet -- that's biblical knee-jerking, on par with "if thine eye offend thee". They're being abused by negligent parents and a growing culture of willing blindness. That's not going to be fixed by blacklists, whitelists or any other technological trickery.
That's why.
- Take That, Moon Unit!
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- etfb
- June 19th, 2007
'Parents who make up bizarre names for their children are ignorant, arrogant or just foolish.'
Sing it, sister!
(via Pharyngula, of course.)
[Edited to add: Incidentally, I think the rest of the article, and the "science" it's reporting, is shite. I just liked the quote, that's all.]
- Red Numbers, Yellow Background
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- February 21st, 2007
Can't embed this directly due to LiveJournal restrictions, so you'll just have to...
click here and
wonder what it means.figure it out with no difficulty at all, apparently.EDIT Yes, you're all a clever bunch. Well done. And well done most of all to
thelancrewitch who is doing most of the actual work. We'll keep you posted on developments.
- The Valentine's Day Massacre
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- February 10th, 2007
Behold! The four LJers of the Apocalypse!
The Elder Daughter of DOOOM and I went along to Politarchopolis's signature event, the Saint Valentine's Day Ball, which this year was run by Lady Alexandra Hartshorne as The Valentine's Day Massacre: an assassin's feast, complete with grisly murders. I caught up with, and photographed,syridian, japester, madradish and, briefly, icansinghigher, and whiled away several happy hours chatting, telling terrible jokes, watching the thunder and lightning and eventually the rain, and eat! eat!ing until we were no longer even remotely too thin.
An utterly splendid event, in the finest of fine Politarchopolan traditions, and one to be proud of. Very pleased.
My Beloved has spoken recently of the mushroom tarts from hell, which were her contribution to the buffet feast. They came out with the second remove and were wolfed down. I'm no fan of fungi (I know where they've been!) but these were spectacular. Ysabella over-catered, in true and proper Politarchopolan style, so we had a wodge to take home, which is a good thing because the Beloved and the BatPup elected not to come along due to extreme knackerdocity. The EDOD was a joy, of course, because she always is, and anyone who says otherwise has obviously not been paying attention.
(There was a moment there when I got to apply one of my personal favourite parenting principles, which is this: "No" is a valuable and precious thing, and must not be thrown about willy-nilly without due care and consideration; use it only when nothing else will do. The EDOD had managed to get her hems a bit damp by "accidentally" jumping into a puddle, but was being generally careful not to get too wet in the v. v. welcome rain. But I remembered that she'd changed out of the garb she'd worn to the picnic, earlier that day, when we dropped her off to her horse-riding lesson, which meant the garb was still in the car. So, I said, there is no possible reason why you should avoid having fun: go jump in puddles and get soaked, and when you're done we'll get your other garb and you can change. And as it was spoken, so it came to pass: she got utterly soaked and had a glorious time, and then she got changed and was perfectly happy for the rest of the night. Show me a "no" that could have had that much benefit!)
At Oriel's and the Baroness's request, I gave a short toast to the memory of Aveline after court, just saying something along the lines of: she was magnificent, and she touched all our lives in all sorts of ways, and the world is a less wondrous place for her departure, and we drank to her memory, those of us who knew her, and that was good. Kat, who knew her best of all, thought it was well spoken, so I'm happy with that.
Tomorrow, we shall head off to brunch withmadradish, japester, icansinghigher, seagoon and naturalredhead, for the latter two are hosting the alto and the soprano at their palatial abode, and they often do brunch at a particularly nice spot of a Sunday. Her Radishness is looking forward to meeting the BatPup, having met and been impressed with her very well-behaved big sister.
But now, due to my own not inconsiderable knackerdocity, I'm off to bed.
- 'Twas The Five Minutes Before Hogswatch...
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- etfb
- December 31st, 2006
Five minutes to go. The Beloved is already asleep, having followed the BatPup's example in that regard earlier this evening. I have finally finished the Do What I Mean option to fix several hundred errors in the Canon Lore database. The rest of the software is now working pretty well, and I hope to have it ready to give to my successor as Canon Herald by next weekend. All the big work is done, now it's just lots of little features and bug fixes. And well over 700 "Fix Me" messages.
New Year's Resolutions? Don't believe in 'em. But I'll try this:
1. Finish Canon Lore.
2. Keep my job.
3. Fix flurf.net.
4. Be a better Dad to my kids.
5. Expand the range-of-effect of #4.
That'll do, Bat, that'll do. Good night, all. Happy New Year!
