we [the dad] :: team dad blog

Guess Who's Back in the *wiki wiki wiki wiki, shut up!*

Vacation Season????? That is one of the big fibs ever told. Who "goes away" for 6-months and calls it "Vacation"? In some circles they call that "doing a stint"

Did Eric get sent up the river? Did I? Not bloody likely. Besides, the records are sealed. So much shit happened, where to start. How about backwards.

1. sweN xoF htiw no dengis nilaP haraS

Yes, I am still obsessed with Miss "Your book made me throw up in my mouth" ex-Gov. of Putin, I mean Alaska. But she's back (thank you Fox News for ensuring that Jon Stewart gets a contract extension), so I am back. and hopefully Eric will be back as well.

2. Jude is addicted to puzzles. Have you ever seen a 2-yr-old do a 100-piece puzzle by himself? I have. Mr. No-Attn.-Span actually has an attention span. who knew? I guess this either means he'll end up in the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit or guessing your weight when the carnival rolls through town. either way I'm a proud papa.

3. Scarlett can bloody read. She doesn't think she can, but she can. She says, "Is it reading if I just know the word, instead of sounding it out?" She thinkgs that's "guessing"--I told her that if everyone sounded out every word all of the time, then no one would ever read books (ooops - that's already happening. Can't wait to have my news and literature administered by intervenous drip).

4. Stef is stef - she's a rock, plugging along, fighting the good fight, burning both ends of the candle, working for the love of it (and I am a cliche machine it seems). She has been helping the world one patient at a time (or sometimes in groups) and keeping me in check as well.

5. I still live half my life in one city and half in another. nothing new there. Shameless plug: I've started keeping another blog. It's like a blog mistress I guess (Eric, forgive me for my blog-infidelity). Surprise, another blogger with multiple blogs cloggering up the inter-web. It's basically a place where I can post my inane thoughts (oh wait, that's what this is for). Actually it's more of an outlet for my artictic endeavors (look for some critical pieces posted to it, some poems (print and audio) and I'll be posting saome of my music there soon too. It's called The Novice Is Apprentice. Check it out @ thenoviceisapprentice.wordpress.com

So, yeah, that's a start. I'll leave you with the best Daily Show clip I've seen in awhile. It'll take 6 minutes from your life--but hey, so will those Ziggy cartoons you get sent to your email every day

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Gretchen Carlson Dumbs Down
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Twice the Shameless

A double dose of sweet geekdom. Here are two web sites that get daily play from me. In fact I'm sort of an addict when it comes to them--both of them are marvels, one for the sheer number-crunching weight of it, the other for its attempt to quantify the unquantifiable and categorize that which cannot be. With so much formulaic flotsam found on the internet, it's important to pass along the sites that are actually worth a shit.

Here's two of them:

fivethirtyeight.com - This website is a math-head's dream. Billing itself as "electoral projections done right," 538 (named after the number of electors in the U. S. Electoral College) is the baby of Nate Silver, who I knew from his work as a baseball statistician. Without trying to amp up the geektitude to unbearable levels (which Wikipedia's 538 entry does and does well), I will say that the premise behind 538 seems to be to take all of the national polls, weight them, factor them in, and bring to bear demographic information & past voting trends, and use this methodology to interpret the real & accurate narratives of the polls in both the presidential and senatorial races. On top of that, Silver has election simulations running daily (10,000 of them) to help come to a prediction of what the election outcome will be. I'm not even coming close to doing justice to the sheer magnitude and detail under which this website operates. It is truly astounding and worth checking out. I visit it daily; not only to see how the climate is changing, but also for the blog that Silver pens for the site as well. If you want to be informed and also reminded how much smarter some people are than you, this is a perfect place to visit.

pandora.com - If you are familiar with the Music Genome Project, founded in 2000, then you probably already know about Pandora--which would be okay. It's good to be reminded sometimes. If you don't know and are a fan of music, then shame on you. I like my iPod too, but it gets a bit "old" sometimes. I know what's on there, I'm comfortable, but I am certainly not discovering anything new when I shove those phones in my ears. But the Music Genome Project came together as an attempt to quantify and categorize music using descriptors and algorithms. By doing so the founders hoped to show the similarities in music, and to be able to describe Art--which I find utterly fascinating. As a writer and musician, I have given a lot of thought to the slippery nature of Art in any medium. Quantifying it, describing it, getting at its essence--essentially being able to talk about it coherently--is next to impossible. The best we can do is to talk around and around it, hoping to get closer to its impenetrable center. Sort of like if "how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Tootsie Pop"was answered with "infinity." So the Genome Project attempts to compare the "DNA" of different types of music. Pandora.com is the radio station that came out of it. Basically you create "stations" named after an artist or a song, and Pandora will start you out with a song by that artist and then proceed to deliver song after song that the Genome deems "like" or "amicable to" the music you originally selected. The beauty of it is the discovery--and also the curiosity it sparks to consider the choices of the Genome. I love this site, listen to it all the time, especially when I am sitting in my office grading the ginormous stacks of student papers. Highly highly highly recommended.

More YouTube Follies

Eh. After the five pole slalom, you didn't see the last one?