What a smarty pants.

Me: “We need to get another nunchuck for the Wii so I can box you.”

Matt: “Yeah, you mean so I can beat you at boxing.”

Would somebody please buy me a digital camcorder?

Jessica and I competed in our tae kwon do school’s annual Pil Sung Tournament last weekend. Jess did very well as usual, taking the gold in forms and sparring and a silver in board-breaking. I did mediocre as usual, and got bronze in all three events. Christine took a couple hundred photos (not just of us, but some of the other competitors as well). Since we don’t have a digital camcorder, the best I could do was to put some of the still photos together into an animation (or two) to show us breaking boards. Here’s one of Jess, then one of me (you can’t see the boards that well in mine).

P.S. - It’s kind of annoying how they loop forever isn’t it?

In looking at our stats just now, I noticed visitors coming from Wikipedia today. It seems that for some 12-odd hours today, there was a link from the Wikipedia page on Perceptions of Religious Imagery in Natural Phenomena to my post about the Flying Spaghetti Monster pancake that miraculously appeared to us last year.

But alas, someone (rightly) edited the page to remove it. I guess it’s true what they say: fame is fleeting.

We finally got our hands on a Wii. We’ve been looking for one for the past four months and everywhere is chronically sold out.

I’ve been making the rounds to Target, Wally World, and Best Buy weekly and also checking Toys R’ Us and Game Stop on occasion. Sometimes I’d ask the pimply-faced geek working there (there’s one in every electronics department) if he knew when they’d be getting more. He’d shake his head and then I’d hear him snickering as I walked away, probably muttering to himself about how he wouldn’t tell me anyway since he and his geek-friends buy them as soon as they arrive and then sell them on eBay and Craigslist for a nice profit. I was at the point where I was about ready to find one on Craigslist and pay the extra for it.

Then yesterday Christine and the kids happened on one at Target. The story, as pieced together from the various accounts, is that Christine pushed the little red button to get the pimply-faced geek to come and unlock the case, and then immediately took up a defensive position in front of the display to assure nobody else would try to claim it. At one point I guess an elderly lady started down the aisle and Christine yelled at her “What do YOU want, you old dustbag!” and the startled octogenarian nearly keeled over from fright in her haste to retreat. But we got the Wii, and that’s the important thing.

Once it arrived home, it was on nonstop from about 4:00pm to 10:30. I think they logged some more serious hours today, too. But it really is more fun than any other system I’ve tried. The wireless interface is just so much more interactive. I even worked up a good sweat playing boxing.

OK, gotta go now. Jessica just went to bed and the Wii is free…

We’ve all heard the stories about how people are kept from getting on their flights because their names are similar to names on the “no-fly” list.

Well apparently it also happens to US Air Mashals, the very people whose job is to provide security on those flights. And it’s not an isolated thing; it actual happens fairly frequently.

Just another day for the Department of Homeland Stupidity.

This, my second submission to the Thinking Homeschoolers dealy, will be much shorter than my first, because I don’t have that much to say. The topic is to write about the National Spank Out Day (April 30) or the National Day of Prayer (May 1).

Both Christine and I have both written about our views on hitting kids before, so I won’t repeat all that except to say, don’t do it. It’s not good for your kids and there are better ways.

As for the National Day of Prayer, I thought I was going to write about how it’s a violation of the First Amendment to have this event officially recognized by Congress. But I’m not.

Then I thought I’d write about how the original intent was that people of all faiths could participate together, but now the day has been taken over by evangelical Christians who actually make volunteers agree to a statement of faith that excludes all non-Judeo Christian groups (scroll down). But I won’t be writing about that.

Then I thought about writing about how the National Day of Reason (also May 1) is a better alternative in which to participate. But I’m not writing about that either.

What I do want to write about is Madeline Kara Neumann. She was the eleven-year-old girl who recently died from diabetic ketoacidosis because her parents thought that she would get better without medical help if they just prayed hard enough. I won’t go on and pontificate about what a tragic waste this was. I will however post the image that has accompanied most of the news stories about her. The image of this smiling, young lady haunts me. She reminds me of my own daughters, happy and full of life. Except that her life is over because her parents trusted prayer over reason. How very, very sad.

I meant to write about this yesterday, but I sort of forgot about it until I got back to work today. Its seems my work environment is turning ever more Office Space-esque. We had a brief bureau meeting yesterday where we were reminded about being “tardy”. I work in a secure building where all employees have to swipe their ID card to enter. Apparently, the time you swipe your card goes into a database so they always know when you came in. I can see the need for that in the event of a security breach. If someone were to do something stupid like removing confidential information from the building, they would need to find out who was around at that time. But now someone is looking at the data to see if people are arriving on time.

I am admittedly a habitual offender when it comes to getting to work on time. My official hours are 7:30 am to 4:00 pm. However, I usually roll in around 7:40. But the thing is, I also usually work until about 4:10, so I’m still putting in my time. Some days I might get back from lunch five or ten minutes late, but other days I skip my lunch and breaks and work an extra hour simply because I’ve got that much to do. I never worry about it much because I figure I’m getting my job done and it will all even out in the end. But the thing is, they would never know that from the badge-swiping data because we only have to swipe a badge to get into the building, but not to leave. So they have no idea whether or not anybody is working late or leaving early, they just know when you get there. Yet that will be the basis of someone trying to determine whether we’re following the rules. Talk about treating people like children. I’m a professional doing a job that carries a lot of responsibility and I expect to be treated as such. I almost asked whether we would need to get a hall pass to visit the restroom, but it was my direct supervisor letting us know about this, and to his credit, he is more concerned with people doing their jobs and doing them well than with the minutia of the schedule. This new big brotherish approach is not coming from him, it’s from elsewhere in the organization.

The second item on the agenda was lateness of responses to exception to policy requests. I reviewed around 350 of these requests last year. Some are simple requests which I can read and type up a response in 10 minutes. Others are complex and require gathering additional information and having it reviewed by other professionals such as accountants or medical personnel. That kind of thing takes time, yet they arbitrarily assign the due date at 10 business days no matter what the request is. If we know a request is going to take longer, we can ask for an extension of the due date. I usually don’t do that because I’m just not that concerned with my stats. But now we’re getting flak for having so many overdue, so I’ll have to start asking for extensions. The result will be that it will still take the same amount of time for me to review a request, but now I’ll be playing a numbers game to make our stats look better. Great. I was tempted to ask if they would also be requiring cover memos on all of our TPS reports, but I restrained myself. They just better not try to take my stapler.

Florida is considering approval of a special license plate that features a shining, golden cross in front of a stained glass window and which contains the words “I Believe”.

As a non-Christian, I am a little concerned. The first amendment to the U.S. Constitution says:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;

This single sentence is of immense importance. It guarantees us the right to participate in any religion that we as individuals desire to take part in, or to practice no religion at all if that is our choice. It guarantees that the government of the United States cannot force its citizens to adhere to any specific religion. And not only does it prohibit the government from forcing a religion on us, it prohibits the government from even promoting or endorsing a particular religion. In order to abide by the constitution, the government has to either: 1) Not promote any religion; or 2) Allow equal promotion of all religions (or the absence of) without discrimination.

I think the majority of Americans support the separation of church and state because they realize that its purpose is not to hinder religion, but to protect citizens from theocracy. However, there are certain Christian groups, typically evangelical and/or fundamentalist, that have no problem asserting their right to practice their religion, but do seem to have a problem with allowing equal opportunity for other beliefs.

Rep. Edward Bullard, the plate’s sponsor, said people who “believe in their college or university” or “believe in their football team” already have license plates they can buy. The new design is a chance for others to put a tag on their cars with “something they believe in,” he said.

I wonder if they would allow a Jewish license plate? Or a plate promoting Islam? What about Pastafarianism? Or Satanism? Or Atheism? Hmmm. Oh wait, I think I found the answer:

Bullard, the plate’s sponsor, isn’t sure all groups should be able to express their preference. If atheists came up with an “I Don’t Believe” plate, for example, he would probably oppose it.

I figured as much.

It’s been crazy around here and I haven’t much felt like blogging lately, just in case you wondered and were worried that Don had sent me deep sea diving without scuba gear or something. Anyway, here’s some of the crazy busy stuff I’ve been doing.

Allison had her final dance competition in Omaha on Saturday. She and I drove over (okay, so I didn’t actually let her drive) on Friday and stayed in a hotel since we didn’t want to get up at 5 am and drive 2-1/2 hours before slapping on a thick coat of makeup and sparkly clothes. She also wanted to watch her teammates Carlee and Harrison perform their duet Friday. We checked in, then watched a bit of the routines before heading out to find dinner, which consisted of driving around Omaha with Miss Indecisive. She could not make up her mind and when I finally told her I was going to decide and picked Old Chicago so I could have a beer, there was a 45 minute wait and I said forget it. We ended up back at the diner next to our hotel. I then spent the evening trying to pretend that I didn’t feel like the thing on Sesame Street that they sing about “One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn’t belong, can you guess which one is not like the others by the time I finish this song.” The competition went okay, they didn’t do as well as the two previous competitions, but oh well. She has talked off and on all year about not doing competition team next year. It took me a while to realize that I think I wanted this more for her than she wanted it for herself. She is not putting her full effort into because she is not that interested in it. Now that I’ve realized this I don’t feel like I need to talk her into doing it next year. If she wants to be on the competition team again in the fall she can, but if she decides not to, that’s okay too.

While in Omaha I missed Matt’s first fencing tournament. There is one coming up in June here in Des Moines and I’m excited to get to see him, since all I’ve seen are the pictures and a few classes last fall. He really seems to enjoy it, and you can not believe the excitement on his face when his own equipment arrived Monday. Sunday we traveled to the blooming metropolis of Maxwell, Iowa for Matt’s soccer game. They were very well matched teams, so it was an exciting game and the boys were tired by the third quarter, but they stuck with it and won. And Matt lost two teeth this week. He has SIX MORE loose ones. I’ll be sure to post a picture when he has only a half of a mouthful of teeth left.

Tonight I started taking a soap-making class with my friend Heather. We made a few bars tonight but have to wait til next week’s class to bring them home. It was fun and interesting and I can’t wait to try out my soap. But tonight I smell goo-ood from all of the essential oils that got on my hands. Next I want to learn to make cheese. I know, I am such a geek.

Jessica had a big night at tae kwon do. She got to lead class. I missed it, of course, because I was at my soap class, and Don missed it, because he was at Matt’s last scout meeting of the year.

Next up: babysitting the cousins, more soccer, a horse show, a trip to Reiman Gardens in Ames, a get together with friends, the Eastern Iowa Homeschool Conference, even more soccer, and two Girl Scout meetings, both which involve pizza. Too bad I can’t have a beer, I think I’m going to need it.

My little sister has a blog now. She only has one post up, so we need to encourage her to keep writing. She’s a photographer too and has a nice gallery of her work, so head over and check it out:

Denise’s blog.

I installed Wordpress 2.5 last night. So far, I’m not real impressed.

I’ll say right up front that I know I’m the biggest jerk in the world for complaining about something I get completely free. But here’s what I think anyway.

There was all this hype about the redesign of the admin pages. So the layout has changed a little and the menus are a little different, but what’s the BFD about that? It’s like re-arranging your living room furniture and telling everyone you built an addition.

And supposedly the dashboard is now controlled by widgets so you can customize it. But where do you do that? The widgets menu only seems to have widgets for the actual blog pages. So I googled to find out how you do it. You either have to manually edit the dashboard file, or install a dashboard manager plugin. But the thing is, there was already a dashboard editor plugin for the old Wordpress, so what’s the difference? You’d think that if they were going through the trouble of widgetizing the dashboard, they’d build the manager in too. That’s like installing a CD player in your car, but leaving the speakers out.

The thing that’s really irritating me though, is that I can’t seem to get the image uploader to work. When you click the little “add image” icon, it opens the uploader, let’s you browse to select a file, acts like its uploading, and then even increments the number on the gallery tab. But click on the gallery tab or go to the media library, and nothing’s there. I’ve tried everything I can think of to get it to work. I re-uploaded the “async-upload” file, I CHMOD’d the uploads folder and all it’s subfolders for write access, and I even made sure the right path was in the settings page. Nothing seems to work. Supposedly there are fixes for some similar problems using an .htaccess file, but apparently my webhosting is set up not to allow .htaccess files below the root level or something because when I tried that it gave me an internal server error. RRRRRGGGHHH! To get the pictures in the post below, I had to upload them via FTP and then insert the image URL into the post. That would be a real pain in the ass to do on an ongoing basis. If anyone has other suggestions I’d love to hear them.

Update: I tried updating Flash as COD suggested and still no luck with uploading pics. I can insert images that are already on the server, I just can’t get any new images to upload.

Matthew had his first-ever fencing tournament today. It was an in-house tournament to help some of the fencers practice up for an upcoming regional tournament, and to let the newer fencers like Matt get some experience in a more fun and casual atmosphere. It was a 3-person team event, and Matt’s team placed last (out of three teams). The other two teams were all more experienced fencers, so Matt’s team actually did pretty well (points-wise), considering two of the three members were first-timers.

I’m sure I’m not biased or anything, but I thought Matt did really well. Several parents of other fencers did actually comment to me that they were impressed with him, and after one of his bouts his opponent told him that he was “really good at parrying”. Here’s a couple photos. He’s on the left in both, wearing club equipment that’s really too large for him.

Apparently Barack Obama has received the coveted Bruce Springsteen endorsement. Bruce writes:

LIke most of you, I’ve been following the campaign and I have now seen and heard enough to know where I stand. Senator Obama, in my view, is head and shoulders above the rest.
(–snip–)
Over here on E Street, we’re proud to support Obama for President.

I suppose that with this devastating news Hillary will drop out of the race, and John McCain will just go ahead and concede the general election.

Seriously though, I heard “Born to Run” on the radio today, and that song still kicks ass.

I think I had my first crisis of non-theism last week, and I’d like to report that I came through fine.

Over the weekend I ventured into the normally off-limits area of our house known as “Jessica’s room”. There is usually some sort of reverse black-hole around her room that forcefully expels any (parental) matter, but due to some unknown anomaly in the space-time continuum, I found myself in there trying to calmly talk her out of her own minor crisis which involved the dreaded subject of “math”.

It was then that I noticed two books on her desk that made me pause. Now I should point out that Jessica goes through books like most kids go through candy. That is to say, she reads a lot of books. But these books were not her normal fare. One was “The Prayer of Jabez for Teens” and the other was “Piercing Proverbs“. I stood there thinking “why is she reading religious books?” This gnawed at me for a little while, but I soon forgot about it and went on with my day. (I should add as a side note that the irony was not lost on me that most parents would be happy finding religious books in their child’s room, but would be alarmed if they found something like “the God Delusion” or “God is Not Great“.)

Then awhile later, Jess asked me to log into iTunes so she could download some music. She had some money left in our iTunes account from some gift cards from last year, and finally found something she wanted.

And what was she downloading? Christian music! So that got me all freaked out again. Was someone trying to influence my daughter’s religious beliefs? Was it her friends? I know that a couple of her friends come from families that are pretty religious-y (and they’re not home-schooled, btw) so I had to wonder.

I brought it up to Christine that night and she responded with the simple statement, “she’s finding her own way”. Of course I know in her mind she added something along the lines of “Duh. Just chill out, you neurotic dorkwad.” She was, of course, absolutely right.

What exactly was I thinking? It took me nearly 40 years to figure out that I’m an atheist (or more accurately, an agnostic atheist) and I was expecting Jessica to avoid the religious path that I myself started her on, simply because I’ve let her know that I no longer believe in God? That’s either pretty arrogant of me or pretty disrespectful towards her as a thinking individual, or maybe both.

I may periodically need to remind myself to relax and trust in the intelligence of my children. Whether they end up Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, Deist, or nonreligious really doesn’t matter. It’s about being who they are and about how they treat others that counts. I was reminded of this once again this morning when I read the latest post from Dale McGowan, who says to let them find their own way more eloquently than I ever could.

Maybe you’ve heard about the new movie Expelled - No Intelligence Allowed that is due to be released in a few days. It stars Ben Stein; you know, the guy that plays the droning teacher in Ferris Beuller’s Day Off (Beuller…Beuller…Beuller…). Except this movie is no comedy. Unless of course you think dishonesty and attempts to sway people with propaganda are funny.

The movie is about the alleged problem of academics being “expelled” from thier positions because of their belief in Intelligent Design. The truth is that the scientists they claim this happened to were all crappy scientists. And some of those profiled in the film aren’t even scientists. One is an M.D. and another a journalist.

The filmmakers also interviewed several prominent scientists who are critics of Intelligent Design. But they did so under false pretenses and used some convenient editing to use certain statements to get a reaction, while leaving out much of the scientific context.

They are marketing the movie mainly to churches and religious groups. They are trying to draw in Christian schools, and even homeschoolers by offering them the chance to win $10,000 for submitting their ticket stubs from the movie. Obviously they are trying to set up an artificial science vs. religion division. This is not an issue about the validity of religious beliefs. The theory of evolution has been accepted by Catholicism, Judaism, and mainstream Protestantism as being compatible with their theologies.

Don’t be misled; and don’t pay to see this giant load of crap.

The National Center for Science Education has set up a website (ExpelledExposed.com) that tells the true story behind the movie, and also deals with some of the larger issues raised.

The NCSE needs some help with getting the word out. If you have a website or a blog, link to ExpelledExposed.com using the word “Expelled” as the link text, like so: Expelled. At the very least, go to the website, read what they have to say, and be informed.

Note: If you have a blog or website, you could also link to the movie’s website using the phrase “giant load of crap” like so: giant load of crap