breakfast first

"Oh, my gosh, they're talking about my burrito."

Several people have sent me this story in the past hour.

Please note that I am not an eighth grader from Clovis, New Mexico, doing an extra credit project about a restaurant specializing in "oddly large burritos" (although they sound quite tasty).

Animals Get More Protection in Washington

The Washington state legislature unanimously passed a bill that will make animal neglect a felony; previously it was just a misdemeanor. Animal cruelty, which has been a felony in Washington since 1994, will have its definition expanded to include starving, dehydrating, or suffocating an animal. The governor is expected to sign the bill.

"It matters a lot to us if animals are suffering and we want to put a stop to it," Steinway [co-founder of an animal rescue group who fought for the legislation] said. "These agencies don't have the money to pursue animal abuses. We do it because we care.

"Before, neglect wasn't taken seriously. Even though you had good evidence, it was a misdemeanor -- not important," he said. "Now, it will be worth law enforcement's while to pursue."

Television and Children

Growing up, I watched way too much television. Looking back, I really regret it -- I now know all of the wonderful things I could have been doing instead, but missed out on. And the effects are still with me today; I'm still prone to watch too much TV if I don't stop myself. Occassionally, Miss J and I go through periods of no TV or greatly reduced TV, and I find I feel much better during those times.

When we found out about the baby, I resolved to keep TV away from our child as long and as much as possible. Reactions from friends has been varied: some think I'm over-reacting (over even doing a disservice to the child), others think it's absolutely the right thing to do, and finally some think it's the right thing to do, but have found that it's too difficult. (Where do you stand? Leave a comment.) Fortunately I personally know some good role models for people who have successfully kept their children away from television.

I also immediately went to the library and picked up Marie Winn's The Plug-In Drug, a book I'd been meaning to read for many years. It makes a solid case on the ill-effects of TV, and offers a lot of strategies for reducing or eliminating television from your family life. The "case studies" of families who reduced their TV watching is particularly interesting; it seems that limiting TV only to a couple of days a week (most commonly the weekend) -- as opposed to say an hour a day -- had the best outcome; the children ended up disinterested by the time TV-watching days rolled around.

This week I also learned about two new studies on the effects of TV on toddlers, both out of the University of Washington. The first study, by Dimitri Christakis, showed that the risk of children aged 1 to 3 developing attention disorders by age 7 increases 10% with every hour of TV they watch per day. They note that the average one-year old watches about 2 hours per day; the average 3 year old watches 3.6 hours.

The second study, by economist (!) Frederick Zimmerman, showed that the more TV a young child watched, the more like he or she would become a bully when they got older. (Whether or not a child was a bully was determined by survey of the child's mother.) I found this part of the New Scientist's coverage of the study the most interesting:

The study also looked at two other factors thought to decrease the likelihood of bullying - cognitive stimulation and parental emotional support. It found that children whose parents regularly exposed them to ideas - by reading aloud or taking them to museums, for example - were a third less likely to become bullies, as were those whose parents provided them with emotional support - by eating meals together and talking.

"Each of these things has an independent effect," says Zimmerman. "So parents who are not going to read to their children and who put their kids in front of the TV instead [represent] a double whammy" for their children's chances of becoming bullies, he says.

                                            

On a somewhat related note, I also find myself increasingly interested in Montessori's methods, mainly as a result of reading Montessori From the Start. I like and agree with the emphasis on self-reliance, curiosity, and basic, physical, non-technical toys. Some parts of the book are a little more out there, but it's still good food for thought.

Cats and Babies

One of the things I'm very concerned about, with the coming baby, is how our cats will react. Babies seem to have a lot of qualities that cats don't like: they're loud, erratic, and about the size of a predator. Fortunately, when friends with babies have visited, the cats seemed to hide more than be defensive.

Still, we want to do everything we can to smooth the introduction. I've come across a lot of good bits of advice in books, on the internet, and from friends. One of the best sources of information came from a pamphlet from the Humane Society of the United States that Miss J's doctor gave us. (The pamphlet we received was a bit different from the one on the website.)  One suggestion was to play a CD of baby sounds for your pets, to get them used to all of the screaming, wailing, and gurgling in their future. That seemed like a good idea for our noise-averse cats, so I ordered one from Preparing Fido, and it came late last week.

So far, we've only played it twice for about five minutes at a stretch. Both times, the cats stared at the speakers with horrified curiosity and got very nervous and jumpy. (I found it very interesting how strongly they reacted to the baby sounds versus music or sounds from the TV, which they don't seem to care about at all. Why the difference?) In any event, the CD seems to be doing its job -- and since we have about three months before the baby arrives, hopefully the cats will adjust to these strange sounds.

Seattle Wiki

I recently discovered the Seattle Wiki, which looks great. Check it out!

This could either be really good or really bad

Another book for you tonight, this time on the home front: Todd Oldham's Handmade Modern: Mid-Century Inspired Projects for Your Home. I tend to like a lot of mid-century furniture (but not the period's urban design -- Mies van der Rohe, you make me so conflicted) so this could be interesting.

From the cover I see it was co-authored with Julia Szabo, whose excellent Animal House Style: Designing a Home to Share with Your Pets I picked up a few years back (and which I can heartily recommend). That definitely lends some weight in my mind to Oldham's book.

CC and iTunes

I recently discovered that the awesome Commonwealth Club of California puts some of its lectures on iTunes, for just under two dollars each. The Commonwealth Club draws some amazing speakers -- just looking at a few upcoming events shows everyone from Jack Welch (disturbing head shot) to Chuck D -- so having the lectures available on iTunes is wonderful. When I checked earlier this week, though, there were only about twenty lectures on iTunes -- perhaps they're seeing what the demand will be?

Update: Hold on! Poking around on their website, I found out that the they have archives of their lectures (going back to 2001) available for streaming.

And it's not even Friday

Despite going through some rough periods -- the Middle Ages, Kattenstoet, April in Wisconsin -- cats have fascinated mankind throughout history, and all over the world. So it's no wonder why volumes have been written about them, and why I'm such a sucker for such books. And I just learned of a new one, When Cats Reigned Like Kings: On the Trail of the Sacred Cats, that's a blend of history and personal narrative. Sounds great -- I can't wait to check it out.

"V-H Day"

That would be "Victory over Housing" day. Last weekend, Miss J and I found out that our offer was accepted on a  nice little house in  West Seattle, so our long and tiring search has finally come to an end. And just in time, too. Things were getting frantic -- at one point, we made offers on three houses in four days. As Ficus so eloquently put it, that's like proposing to three women in a week.

The location is what really sold us on this house. It's in a neighborhood, Belvidere, that we really like, and it's just a few blocks away from our friends F&L, who were unbelievably helpful with our housing search. It's also within walking distance of lots of shops and restaurants, so we'll be able to walk and bike for our normal errands, which was a very high priority. There's also a great playfield nearby -- that will be a lot of fun with the baby.

On the downside, the house is little less "finished" than I was hoping for. There's nothing major, but there are a bunch of projects I'll want to knock out shortly after we move in. As inspiration, I think I'll hang a portrait of Erich on the wall. The guy just became a father to twins, has a new job, and lots of side interests. So what does he do with his free time? Eat? Sleep? No, he remodels his kitchen himself.

We don't move in to the new place until the end of May, which should give us a good amount of time to pack and try to find someone to rent our apartment (so we won't have to pay a penalty for breaking our lease). Naturally I'll try to blog as much about the home repair as I can. But I'm no Erich.

Sign of the (disturbing) times

The lead story in this morning's business section of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer was an AP article on the 40th anniversary of Moore's law. At the end of the article, you'll see a section entitled "The Law of Silicon Valley" where Moore's original observation is quoted. What's listed as the source? "Wikipedia.com."

Is it possible that the author, and his editors, couldn't be bothered to check the original source on a forty year-old topic? Is the Wikipedia the best available, most definitive source? I would expect a high school English teacher would reject that citation, let alone the editors of the AP. Of course, given that they didn't even get the website of the citation right -- Wikipedia is a dot-org, not a dot-com -- why should we believe that they did their homework anywhere else?