Random Web Link: Dazzle Camouflage

Saw this on Boing-Boing: A cool article on the use of dazzle camouflage on battleships in World War I.

Max's Birthday

Max turned six years old yesterday and, as with all of his birthdays, I found myself saying “No, he can't be x, he must be x-1!! Where did x years go?!?!” (Hey, I'm a geek.) Setting aside the fact that I'm getting old, I can say with confidence that Max had a blast on his 6th birthday!!

The day started with him joining his “big kids group” at Bodøgården on a trip to a farm near Brabrand Sø (a large lake) where he got to see and interact with a bunch of different types of farm animals including cows, pigs, goats, and chickens (at least those are the animals Max talked about afterwards). They then got on their bikes (which they had brought with them on a trailer connected to the “Bodø Bus,” the van that Bodøgården has to cart kids around to field trips and birthday parties) and travelled around the lake for a total distance of 10 kilometers, which is exactly 10,000 meters (ha ha) or roughly 6.2 miles! They took frequent stops along the way to have a snack, and then later lunch, and to see the lake and its environs.

He was back at Bodøgården by the time I arrived at 2 PM to attend his birthday party. L. had made a cake for this party on Sunday and we dropped it off on Monday so it would be there on Tuesday just in case the baby decided to make an appearance in between (he didn't). They decorated for his party in the traditional way with lots of Danish flags everywhere, but his teachers also made him an American flag to display as well. His class then sang him Happy Birthday as well as a Danish birthday song that I hadn't heard before. They then counted slowly from 1 to 6 getting louder with each number until they were screaming and cheering in celebration of Max completing his sixth trip around the sun.

After his party, I took Max to the Aarhus fish market where we picked up a fresh salmon fillet, so L. could make Max's favorite dinner: salmon, broccoli, and mashed potatoes. We also went to Huusom's bakery near our house and picked up ANOTHER birthday cake to have after dinner.

When we got home, the kids had a short time to check in with L. and then we had a video conference with my parents for about an hour, so they could wish Max a happy birthday and watch him open the presents they had sent him. Max's cousin Anthony was also present for the video conference which was good, since Anthony is a Pokemon expert and Max had a bunch of Pokemon-related questions that needed answering!

After the video conference, we had dinner and then Max received a call from L.'s parents, who also wished him a happy birthday and he got to thank them for sending a new DVD for him to watch. After the phone call, he opened up the rest of his presents (he got a cool Lego Star Wars Tie Fighter that his Papa is not at ALL interested in) and then we had dessert.

Max had a lot of fun and you can see other pictures from his day in our Max's 6th Birthday photo set.

Happy Birthday Max!!!

Ken

The Waiting Game

Here in Denmark, they call maternity clothes, ventetøj. If you don't believe me, visit the Mummi Ventetøj website and click on the UK flag that appears at the bottom of the page. The literal translation of ventetøj is “waiting clothes” and that's what we are doing here in Denmark: waiting.

Waiting for the baby to arrive… hopefully soon!

Ken

Catching Up: The Trapholt Museum

Lunch at the Trapholt, originally uploaded by kenbod.

Back on April 1st, we visited the Trapholt Museum in Kolding, Denmark. (No fooling!) Kolding is about an hour and ten minutes south of Aarhus and so we decided to make the trek down to see what the museum had to offer. The Trapholt is best known for its furniture collections but also features some modern art and architecture exhibits.

The picture above shows Ken and the kids in the Trapholt's cafe waiting for their very expensive lunch to arrive. Our lunch cost more than 50 dollars for the four of us, which is (unfortunately) a fairly typical price here in Denmark for the four of us to eat out. (Hint: we don't eat out very often!)

You can view the rest of the photos from our visit to the Trapholt at Flickr in our Trapholt photo set. As you will see, they had some very unusual couches and some amazing chairs on display.

Believe it or not, the kids did pretty well trekking through a furniture museum, only complaining towards the end of our stay. The best line of the day was when Max turned to me and said: “Papa, I thought you said this museum had INTERESTING stuff!!”

Enjoy,

Ken

London Underground Puzzle

London Underground Puzzle, originally uploaded by kenbod.

Our friends, Mark and Christine, gave us this puzzle of the London Underground when they came to visit us in Aarhus, Denmark last February. We finally got around to "completing" it this past week. I put quotes around the word completing in the previous sentence because this is where we stopped. All remaining pieces were pure white and required the brute force method to position. That took all the fun out of the process so we stopped and declared victory!

Traffic in Cairo

Back in 1993, I was lucky enough to travel to INTERCHI 93 which was held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, more commonly known as Holland, although Holland is just a particular region (two provinces to be exact) of the Netherlands.

Since this was going to be my first trip to Europe, my journey grew (much like this sentence) from a simple six-day conference trip to a month long trek through Europe, to throwing in a side trip to Cairo because I “always wanted to go to Egypt,” which is true, because I've always been fascinated by the pyramids at Giza. The trip was fantastic and included, in addition to Cairo and Amsterdam, stops in Paris, Florence, Venice, Pisa, and Salzburg, and even a trip to my mother's ancestral hometown of Bielefeld, Germany.

I spent four days in Cairo (which, at the airport, had nice big signs saying, I'm paraphrasing here, “Welcome to Cairo, people possessing or trafficking drugs will be hanged, Have a nice day!”) seeing the sites and cursing my bad luck that I hadn't been able to schedule a trip to the Valley of the Kings since it was the 50th anniversary of discovering King Tut's tomb and they had opened it to the public to celebrate. (Update: this turns out to be wrong... see below.) Actually, I wasn't all that disappointed because the Sphinx and the Giza pyramids more than made up for that. The Great Pyramid is a stunning sight; even though I knew it was more than 40 stories tall, I was still absolutely amazed at how big it was, and although pictures of the Sphinx are almost cliché in our society, standing in front of the real thing is a humbling and powerful experience.

Anyway, whenever I discuss my trip to Cairo, I inevitably bring up Cairo's traffic, which makes the traffic in Los Angeles or New York City, look like a bunch of toddlers on tricycles. There are streets and traffic lights in Cairo, but these are only considered as “guidelines” and rarely followed exactly. Instead, drivers pay attention not to stop lights but to the guards standing at most intersections holding scary looking automatic weapons. The general rule for driving is to go as fast as you can on any suitably horizontal surface without actually killing anyone or destroying too much property. These are all elements that make for a truly crazy driving experience, but what makes Cairo traffic truly sublime is its pedestrians. There are few things scarier than to be zipping down a highway at 70+ miles per hour, roughly in a lane of some sort, and watch a pedestrian step into oncoming traffic WITHOUT LOOKING AT THE CARS! They then proceed to cross the highway as if it was no more than a river with an especially strong current. I was never actually behind the wheel while in Cairo, but several times I thought I was going to be witness to vehicular manslaughter.

What triggered this post was that a political blogger that I read regularly, Billmon over at the Whiskey Bar, is in Cairo now and had this to say about Cairo's traffic:

Along the way, though, we had to deal with Cairo traffic, which is to traffic what Iraq is to nation building -- with the added distraction that Egyptian pedestrians are utterly fearless when it comes to wading out into a major arterials, and utterly indifferent to any problems this may cause for the drivers bearing down on them. Egyptians in general don't so much walk as glide (those ancient tomb painters knew their subjects) and watching a bunch of them weave their way among the cars zinging past is enormously entertaining, like watching a enormous chorus line do the cha cha.

In that post, he talks about (among other things) the dangers of assuming that your Visa card truly works “world wide” a myth that we discovered early in our trip to Denmark when we encountered multiple stores that would only take a “Danish Visa card” and not one of those strange Visa cards that we brought from the states.

But, more important to me, was the fact that he confirmed that my memories of Cairo's traffic are NOT exaggerated and boy did that bring me back to those four wonderful days in Cairo back in April 1993.

Enjoy,

Ken

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Update: Since writing this post, I have learned that King Tut's tomb was discovered in 1922, so it would have been the 71st anniversary of that discovery in 1993. So, now I'm not sure why King Tut's tomb was open when I was there, but I remember having several people ask me if I planned to go down to the Valley of the Kings to see it.

We Made It!

Yesterday, Leysia and I celebrated 10 years of marriage!

We thought that the baby would arrive on our anniversary but he is going to keep us waiting for a little while longer.

To celebrate our anniversay, we stocked up on Holmegaard, as we are collecting some items that are uniquely Danish to remember our year here in Denmark.

We look forward to many more years together!

Max's Geometric Drawing

While I'm on the subject of kids drawings, here's a scan of a picture recently created by Max. He calls these geometric patterns “Jewels”...

Max's Jewels

Enjoy!

Ken

Anthony's Dragon

My nephew Anthony is an excellent artist. He recently sent a drawing of a dragon to Max and we are quite proud of him. I especially like the smoke coming out of the dragon's nose!

Anthony's Dragon (PDF document)

Anthony created this picture because Max and I are currently working our way through a book featuring a dragon called Saphira and her dragon rider, Eragon.

Thanks Anthony!

Ken

Max's Party

Max's Red Hair Day Originally uploaded by kenbod.

We held Max's birthday party in early May to avoid any conflicts with the expected arrival of his baby brother sometime in late May or early June. (We'll be sure to celebrate on Max's actual birthday too.)

Anyway, a bunch of kids from Max's school, Bodøgården, came to his party. The Danes do birthday parties in a strange (to us) way. The party is typically held on a weekday (not weekend) and the teachers drive all the kids to the party, help to manage the kids during the party, and then drive them back to school after the party is over.

Since the party typically starts in the morning, around 10 AM, its too early for lunch. So, no problem, the kids eat cake FIRST! Then, they play for a bit, at which point lunch is served.

We had the kids eat cake inside, and then, since it was a nice day, we moved them outside to play. Ken then went to grab pizza from our favorite pizza place (we placed the order a couple of days ahead of time) and the kids then had fun eating pizza outside.

After lunch, the kids get a bag of candy and eat some of it before departing.

You can see pictures from the entire party by click on the picture above and then scrolling through the rest of the pictures in the Max's Party photo set on Flickr.

Enjoy!

Ken

The Danish Dragon

Max had his friend Peter over to play yesterday and we caught some more video of Max speaking Danish as a result. Peter is the big brother of Eva, a girl in Max's school. He got to know Peter since Peter and Eva's parents befriended us quite early in our stay here in Denmark. Anne Marit (Peter and Eva's mother) works in the same building as we do. She and her husband, Klaus, have been nice enough to have Max over to play several times at their house. We've been over to their house, as well, for dinner and their entire family came to visit us over the Easter holiday.



Max is wearing face paint in the movie since earlier that day he attended a festival held to honor children in the Danish day care system that are learning Danish as a second language. His skin is green since he asked to be made into a dragon! He tells us that the festival was quite nice and had lots of things to do and eat and that there were even performances by clowns doing magic tricks!

During the video, the kids are eating chocolate and talking about various things. Max is being his usual crazy self and Lilja does her usual good job of being the center of attention. Lilja also does something unexpected towards the end of the video.

Enjoy!

Ken

The Eternal Value of Privacy

As many of you know, it has recently come to light that the NSA has been spending its precious resources monitoring international phone calls and keeping track of the calling habits of millions of American citizens.

In a case of "kill the messenger", the political right have tried to focus the debate on the people responsible for leaking this information to the press, calling them traitors or worse. They then drag out the tired argument designed to appeal to ignorant people:

"If you are not doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?"

(For instance, the talking heads at Fox News have been spouting this nonsense a lot in recent days.)

Bruce Schneier has written an article that destroys this heinous argument over at Wired magazine called The Eternal Value of Privacy. Please read it!

The ideas in this article used to be self evident to most Americans (and I hope still are) but the government is doing its best to change that (not to mention the surging state of anti-intellectualism in America) by using Newspeak to claim that plainly illegal activities are in fact perfectly legal.

Remember, George Orwell said IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH and just in case you don't have your copy of 1984's Cliff Notes around that phrase actually means IGNORANCE (of the public) IS STRENGTH (for the government).

Also, in the same way that TSA has gone past its mandate of keeping our airplanes safe and become an extension of the DEA, the phone records being collected by the NSA are already being used against private citizens of America who have nothing to do with terrorism.

The people in power in America are increasingly finding that the ideas in our Constitution and, in particular, the Bill of Rights are inconvenient in allowing them to stay in power. Fundamental tenants of the American system including separation of powers, our right to privacy, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, due process (5th amendment), etc. are under relentess assault by the present administration, all in the name of this ambiguous, amorphous "War on Terror" (WAR IS PEACE, anyone?).

We Americans must stand up for our rights, if we wish to preserve them.

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Update: The current administration appears to like the right's kill-the-messenger strategy.

Update 2: Speaking of separation of powers, who needs them? The assault continues…

Update 3: Another excellent article from Wired... this time discussing the myth that we have to give up privacy to increase security. Why not pick both?

Max's Red Hair Day

Max's Red Hair Day Originally uploaded by kenbod.

On the day we celebrated Max's birthday with his friends at school, he dressed up as spiderman and so Leysia colored his hair to match his costume. If you click on the picture, you'll be taken to Flickr where you can view the rest of the pictures in the Max's Red Hair Day photo set.

Enjoy!

Ken

Our Trip to Copenhagen

Ken and Kids in front of Little Mermaid Originally uploaded by kenbod.

Last December, we took a trip to Copenhagen and Tivoli. I finally got around to posting a bunch of pictures from our trip on my Flickr account.

Here's a picture of me with the kids in front of the Little Mermaid.

Click on the picture to be taken to the photoset where you can see other pictures from our trip.

Enjoy!

Ken

Lovely Lilja

Max's Grocery List

For the past week, Max has been working on his letters and his words by writing his own grocery list, usually working on it in the car. He would think of something that he would want on his list, we would then sound the word out for him, and he had to guess what letters went with the sounds we were making. For the most part, he does very well, mapping the sounds into letters. He has the most difficulty identifying the short vowel sounds, but then so does everyone!

Anyway, he is very proud of his list (we are too).

How many words can you identify? Hint: some words are split across mutliple lines and some of the words start and then don't finish, such as "Broccoli" which appears as "Broc" on the list. Max loves broccoli. (!!) My favorites are "Bacons" and "Butters". (We've taught Max the rule about adding "s" to make words plural and he's been applying it everywhere!)



Be sure to click on the preview above to see the list in detail. We have an even higher resolution scan of this list that I can send to interested grandparents. Just send me e-mail! :-)

Ken

Spring in Denmark: I Want My Money Back

Spring 2006 in Denmark has been a major disappointment. Think "cold" and "rainy". We get occasional sun, here and there, but nothing to write home about. Indeed, earlier today it was not only pouring rain outside my window, but HAILING for several minutes straight! For crying out loud its MAY already and we haven't had Spring yet!

I want sun and I want warm temperatures! I want to put away my jeans and start wearing shorts again.

Spring, where are you?

Ken

A Trip to the Circus

This past Saturday I took the kids to see a circus in Holstebro and we had a lot of fun! Why Holstebro? Isn't Holstebro an hour and a half a way from Aarhus? Why yes it is... see the map below.



Wasn't this same circus in Aarhus the weekend before? Why yes indeed... but, you see, Leysia and I were under the erroneous impression that the circus was going to stay in Aarhus for two weekends. So, when we saw the tents just five minutes from our apartment, we told the kids, "Hey, that'll be fun. We'll go to the circus next weekend!" And, we did. We just had to drive for an hour and a half to catch the show in Holstebro! :-) (Sigh.)

Anyway, this circus goes by the name of Arena and they put on a very enjoyable show. (For more information about circuses in Denmark, you can check out this website, which offers text in both Danish and English.)

Here is a picture of the main circus tent.



Here's a picture of the kids eager to go inside and see the show.



And, here's a picture of Max in front of the tent, showing off his stunning good looks. (I've said it before, I'm biased.)



The show featured elephants, horses, seals (!), clowns, magic tricks, and performers of various sorts. Max is at the perfect age for magic tricks. He believes in them completely and was twice completely stunned when a trick was performed. The first trick involved a variation of the magician trapped under water in handcuffs trying to get out, he escapes at the last minute with his assistant somehow ending up in the container handcuffed and trying to get out. ("How did he get out?!?!" Max says to me with extremely wide eyes.)

The second trick involved an assistant getting inside of a device into which six burning torches were placed. After the last torch was in position, the device was opened to reveal that the assistant had disappeared. ("Where did she go?!?!?" says Max, big eyes still in place and still just as wide.) The performers were also excellent, mainly performing impressive feats of balance and strength.

Finally, Lilja spent the show seated on my lap viewing everything very intently as she tried to figure out what the hell was going on! She especially enjoyed those acts that featured animals and would say "Bye Elephant!" or "Bye Horse" whenever an animal left the stage.

Both of the kids also enjoyed attending the show with papa, since they were able to wrangle cotton candy, popcorn, AND a chocolate bar out of him. (They are starting to work together on this... help I'm outnumbered!)

Even though Leysia stayed at home that day to rest, she had fun listening to Max and Lilja tell her stories about the show.

In summary, much fun was had by all!

Enjoy,

Ken

The Liberal Media

For some strange reason, the allegedly liberal media in the U.S. is failing to discuss Stephen Colbert's scathingly funny performance at the White House Correspondents Dinner in which he visibly discomforts the President, senior administration officials and pretty much the entire White House press corps. (Good for him! Its about time someone stood up against this President and his close cadre of sycophants.)

Why even the New York Times (you know the paper that conservatives heap scorn upon for its liberal bias) failed to mention Colbert's appearance, instead focusing only on the President's skit. But its not just the New York Times, but other supposedly liberal bastions such as CNN, that did little more than publish the AP article that only mentions that Colbert was one of the other entertainers. You would think that if there was a huge liberal bias in the news media that they would be focusing on Colbert's skewering of the Cheney admin..., execuse me, the Bush administration, and only mention the Bush skit in passing. So, I'm still searching for the liberal bias in the news media that everyone talks about. (For evidence of conservative bias in the news media, take a look at News Hounds. Their Motto: We watch Fox so you don't have to.)

Fortunately, the Bush administration hasn't shut down the Internet (yet), and Colbert's performance is readily available if you know where to look. And to make that task easier, here is a link to his performance on YouTube, Google Video:

Full Video

Political satire at its finest!

Ken

P.S. If you want to thank Colbert for what he did, you can visit the (very) recently created thankyoustephencolbert.org.

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Update: Okay, four days later, the New York Times has posted an article that discusses Colbert's performance. Rumors of the liberal bias in the main stream media can now resume! :-)

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2nd Update: Unfortunately, the YouTube links above no longer work. :-( C-SPAN asked YouTube to yank the three videos citing copyright infringement. That's too bad. Colbert's performance is still out there, you can apparently buy it from C-SPAN for 24 bucks, but now you'll have to get the video via BitTorrent (meaning that most people won't be able to do it.).



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3rd Update: C-SPAN decided to place the video on Google Video. I updated the text above to point to its location there.