38 Trips Around the Sun

Today is my birthday! :-)

I celebrated earlier this week with my family in California (we were out in California this past week to attend my sister's wedding) and I'm celebrating tonight by taking the kids over to Callie's house for dinner and dessert. L. and Miles are out in California still to attend L.'s 20th high school reunion. (My 20th reunion was being held the same day in California but I had to return early because Maxwell started first grade yesterday.)

Today, I'm “celebrating” by working on the class website for my seminar this semester since classes start next week. Lucky me! :-)

Anyway, a lot has been going on recently and that's why I haven't been posting much recently. I have pictures of the kids at my sister's wedding that I need to post and I'll try to get those up this weekend.

So, please, have some fun today in honor of my birthday... you deserve it! :-)

Ken

The Jill Carroll Story

Jill Carroll, the reporter for the Christian Science Monitor, who spent 82 days as a hostage of Sunni insurgents in Iraq, is starting to tell her story. I've read part one of what is to be an eleven part series, and it was really interesting. On her first day in captivity, the same people who killed her interpreter, Alan Enwiya, fed her a dinner typically reserved for an honored guest and invited her to sit in their living room and watch TV. They asked her to pick what they watched and she flipped though the channels and found an episode of Oprah being broadcast by satellite from Dubai. Watching Oprah with your kidnappers? How surreal that must have been for her.

The monitor has set-up an RSS feed so that interested readers can be notified when a new part of the story has been released. If you use an RSS reader, you can subscribe at: http://rss.csmonitor.com/jillcarroll

Ken

Fun Fact

In 4 days, the light that was leaving the Sun on the day I was born will hit a star called Zeta Doradus. Zeta Doradus is 38 light years away or (as Google tells me) 2.23382993 × 10¹⁴ miles.

How would I know this?

Because I make use of the Light cone service that can produce an RSS feed that notifies you when your light cone is approaching or hits a stellar object.

So, yes, I'm a geek AND my birthday is approaching! :-)

Ken

Cool Picture of a Tungsten Needle

To break up the coverage from the doom and gloom today, here is a reminder that some humans on this planet are focusing on the right things: you know, science, advancing the state of human knowledge, and creating cool pictures of very sharp objects!

The coolest thing from the caption of the linked picture is this sentence: The small round features are individual atoms. (!!!)

Enjoy,

Ken

Fear Mongering

If you've watched the news coverage today, you would have been subjected to expert after expert telling you how easy it is to blow up a plane with liquid explosives. Rex Hammock nails the correct response to this by asking Are terrorists idiots? After all, if its so easy, shouldn't planes be dropping out of the sky left and right?

Meanwhile, Reuters reports that the U.S. government is planning on expanding airport security measures on Friday adding to the additional measures that were added today. Great, just what we needed!

Ken

Pure Genius

As Boing-Boing and others have pointed out: if today's foiled terrorist plot involved smuggling the components of a liquid explosive onto a plane and then igniting them either via a spark from an electronics device or by shaking the contents vigorously, then why are the geniuses at the TSA taking all liquids from passengers and then COMBINING them together by pouring their contents into garbage cans and the like?




ANSWER: they know these items are safe, and that today's restrictions are unnecessary.

So, why are they making people do this?

ANSWER: the government wants you to be scared so they can take your freedoms from you. They don't want you to remember that, for instance, driving your car is way more dangerous than an act of terrorism.

As zefrank says, don't be afraid. Its really the only way to defeat terrorism.

Ken

Classic Case of Projection

On August 8, 2006, Bill O'Reilly said the following (as reported by News Hounds):

The far left in America is dominated by haters, people who despise their own country and want to injure those with whom they disagree. These smear merchants are now all over the mainstream media and have spread like lice on the Internet.

This is a laughable quote because this is exactly what Bill O'Reilly does day in and day out just with the names changed. He hates liberals. He attempts to injure those with whom [he] disagree[s]. He's also a smear merchant extraordinaire.

So this quote is a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black.

In addition, it puts on display one of the most insulting ploys used by the far right. They routinely say that those people who disagree with them hate (or in the quote above, despise) their own country.

Nothing could be further from the truth!

People on the political left might hate or despise what people on the political right are doing to America, or they might hate or despise the policies advocated by the people on the political right but they don't hate their country. Indeed, they are trying to protect it!

So, the next time a Republican tells you that their opponents (or liberals) hate America, laugh in their faces and show them how much disdain you have for such a sleazy tactic.

After all, its the far right that has within its membership, people who want to repeal the U.S. Constitution, replace our government with a theocracy and impose biblical law on the United States. If you define America by the values currently contained within the U.S. Constitution, then these people must hate America too. After all, they want to scrap the whole thing…

Ken

Civil Liberties: Alas We Hardly Knew Ye!

Thanks to the recent foiling of a terrorist plot involving a flight from the UK to the USA, governments are stepping in and stripping civil liberties from their passengers left and right.

Boing Boing has the details of how the UK and USA governments are overreacting to this recent incident.

For those of you who doubt that our civil liberties are under assult, look no further than these actions.

Ken

Great Quote on Politics

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.

Attributed to Ernest Benn

Max the Fisherman

We have a “catch-and-release” fishing lake near where we live and Max has wanted to go fishing for a long time. So, yesterday and today, we took Max fishing. He recently received his first fishing pole, because he's been working on learning how to read, and we used the fishing pole to motivate him enough to learn how to read short words ending in the following letters, -at, -an, -ap, -ag, -ad, -id, -ip, and -it. (Think sentences like “Big Cat can dig.”) We didn't do so well on our first day of fishing, but on the second day, Max caught three fish (which Papa had to subsequently get off the hook and toss back in the lake)! Max was very proud (and rightly so)!

Here is Max walking to the lake with his fishing pole.



Here he is with one of the fish that he caught.



And, here is a close-up of that fish.



More photos are available at the Max the Fisherman photo set.

Enjoy,

Ken

More Miles Pics

In a move that is sure to please the grandma lobby, here are more pictures of Miles!









Enjoy,

Ken

Sweet Lilja

Here's Lilja gracing us with a sweet smile.

Its been a lot of fun watching her become 2 and a half years old. She holds her own against her older brother and her use of language is getting better on a daily basis. She likes to play with her baby dolls and to cook imaginary food for papa using her pots and pans. (She'll come up to me and say "What do you want?", I'll then make a request, and then pretend to eat it when she gets done preparing whatever it was I requested.)

She's a fun little girl and I feel lucky to have her in my life. I'm looking forward to watching her transition into a three-year old over the next six months…

Should be fun, especially if she keeps giving us smiles like the one above! :-)

Enjoy,

Ken

Flowers in Colorado

Here are some pictures that L. took of flowers in Colorado. Ain't they pretty?









Enjoy,

Ken

Miles at 8 weeks

Here are some photos of Miles taken one day before he turned eight weeks old and six days before he turns two months old. Lilja managed to sneak into one of them. She really loves Miles!









Enjoy,

Ken

Beating the Heat

One of the great things about returning to Colorado is all the opportunities that Max and Lilja have to play with their cousins, Wyatt and Addie. Here they are beating the heat by running through some sprinklers at Nonna and Poppi's house.









Enjoy,

Ken

Getting a Haircut

Max and Lilja got their hair cut this week from L.'s favorite hair stylist, Tracy. While L. was happy with the results, the kids were mainly excited by the fact that they received cookies to eat while they waited for their turn and a lollipop each on their way out.

You can see additional pictures from their visit at this photo set.

Enjoy,

Ken

The Siblings

Check out how Max and Lilja enjoy being near their baby brother in this new new photo set.

Enjoy!

Ken