Excerpts from a conversation with our 3.8-year-old:

Stuart: I’m so silly.
Frank: Will you be silly tomorrow?
Stuart: I’ll be silly when I am four, five, six, seven years old.
Frank: Will you be silly when you’re 80 years old?
Stuart: Yes.
Frank: Will you be silly when you’re 175 years old?
Stuart: Yes, just like grandpa.
Frank: OK. So remember how silly grandpa is. When you’re a grandpa, be just as silly!
Stuart: Nooooo!

I don’t know how to explain that last one.

In my ample spare time, I enjoy reading accident reports. I am too genteel to settle for the newspaper/TV abbreviated summary abstract excerpt, if a detailed technical report is also available. For major disasters, book-length technical reports are sometimes issued. These serve not just to explain how some system failed, but also introduce technically minded non-specialists to the area. Some examples:

• Deepwater Horizon – BP report
• Space Shuttle Columbia disintegration
• Sinking of the BC Ferry Queen of the North
• 9/11 commission report

• Many more at the Canadian and American transportation safety agencies.

Do you have any other favorites?

If I were a muslim, I would be more than a bit offended at the current hubbub surrounding the burn a koran day event apparently coming this weekend. Sure, it’d suck that these silly pyromaniacs would burn the book and all. But, I’d be an adult and could live with that stunt.

What’s baffling and offensive is all the dire predictions of mayhem that may follow. These experts and officials say that “we” muslims might just lose control, and turn into terror-spewing maniacs and start killing people and blowing shit up.

Now, really. Surely all these people don’t honestly believe that, upon provocation, muslims turn into mindless rage robots, unable to accept responsibility for their own actions. For that would be a bunch of bigoted bullshit.

UPDATE A week later, Jonah Goldberg expands on this same point.

Why do people take poor risks, like flying in dangerous conditions, failblog-worthy stunts, doing conspicuous illegality?
Maybe it’s Bruce – trying to sabotage themselves because they deserve failure.
I’ve met my Bruce many times, but now that he has a name, I’ll try to expel him.

The family visited a nearby park this weekend. Not any park, for there are plenty of ordinary parks here. There’s one just on the other side of our back fence, with streams and frogs and snakes and birds and everything except beer bottles and bears. No, we went to the Backus Heritage Conservation Area.

The place has a pretty good web site, for the year 1995 at least, but don’t let that hold you back. If you’re in the area north of Lake Erie, and you’re into living museums, it deserves a visit. Why? Let me count the ways.

First, the site is lovely. A thick natural carolinian forest covers the bulk of the area, so there is plenty of variety of plants and animals. Much farther to the north, one would see more boring pine and fewer neat creatures.

Second, the interpretive center. I fie upon the term “interpretive center”, as it reminds me of hippies trying to give LSD-inspired names to stuff. This one looks like a simple little old building from the outside. On the inside however, modern displays and facilities hide, as the building is wider and deeper than it appears. Dozens of of nicely-preserved stuffed animals illustrated the content.

Third, the mill. There is an amazingly preserved water-powered flour/grain mill building here. It was used since the late 1700s, apparently. It’s four stories tall, and unlike all other similar structures I’ve seen, it was completely open to visitors, and all the machines / belts / gears / chutes were all still there. The main waterwheel/driveshaft assembly seemed in good enough shape to actually activate, if one were to adjust the water bypass gates just beside the building. The gate control was also reachable to visitors (though it was not labeled).

Fourth, the “pioneer village” type buildings nearby. These were all fully open to visitors, nothing but storage areas roped off, all the artifacts could be gently handled in situ, if a visitor were to lose her self-restraint. There was no museum nazi to spy on us and shriek “Put that thing down or vee veell let loose the dogs, schnell!”. They assumed that we were trustworthy enough to be around a ton of fragile multi-century-old stuff without stealing or breaking it. What a great spirit. I’m glad they haven’t been burned badly enough to shut this amazing access down.

So, if you want to step back into the past, see real objects and machines, up so close that you could use it all, but will keep your vandalism urges under wraps, then go go go.

Over at the EU Referendum blog, there is a readworthy article about the myth (!!) of the Battle of Britain. Richard North and associates have been playing historian for several months now, collecting a day-by-day rundown of this famous battle. They’re troubled by some of their findings, where official history appears to differ from actual history. Give it a read if WWII – or government propaganda – are of interest.

… our #2 brat was still stuck imprisoned in his watery cell.

Today I wish to preach about the work-oriented social network known as LinkedIn.

It has many thousands of users, many of whom willingly disclose tremendous detail about where they worked, what they worked on, whom they worked with. Some of them pay for the privilege by buying a higher level account. With all the ads and data mining, it’s obvious what LinkedIn gets out of the deal. But what do the users get out of it?

• notification of job changes of ex-co-workers. OK, I guess, but if one hasn’t been in sufficient contact with that person to be told directly, then chances are the impact of the change on you is miniscule.

• trivia scavenger hunt. Play “Where are they now?”. “Who else went to this ag. school?”. “How long do people stay directors at company X?”. Fun for five minutes.

• social butterfly. Collect the most “connections” … feel the warmth … magic happens … profit!

What do the users not get out of it?

• any plausible value in the references posted by others. This is because all references are clamped to be positive: phrased as “recommendations” by LinkedIn, and subject to approval of the subject. So all feedback is positive: “everyone is special, so no one is”. This makes the recommendations meaningless for candidate-evaluation purposes.

Gentle reader, if you have found a positive use for the thing, please consider mentioning it below.

There now, I’m done. How about a dancing monkey?

Every weekday, a small number of school buses rumble past my home office window. Last year, Eric used one pair of them, meaning rushed mornings and impeccably timed rendezvous at the stops. Not any more.

He is now school age, but is right here, most every day. We (mostly Juimiin) now have official recognition as his teachers, for as long as we deem appropriate. The role is not new: she’s played amateur teacher to both brats since the beginning. She had taught them how to read, write, and count by an early age. But why go on?

Good question, and one that local school staff and some friends/family have asked us. There are a whole sardine-can full of reasons, some of which are below.

One reason is “special needs”. A child who is well outside the normal range in several cognitive/social scales needs special treatment in schools. Hereabouts, some of this can be provided by Educational Assistants, at least for those abnormalities in the below-average direction. Since they provide one-on-one care, EAs are naturally scarce, even though they are not paid very well, and aren’t normally trained as teachers.

In the above-average aspects, kids usually have to fend for themselves. Some “gifted” enriched programming may be available, at least for kids beyond a certain minimum age (9 around here), subject to availability and constituting only a small fraction of time. Beyond that, one needs to rely on available time of the classroom teachers to customize the lessons. This too is of course scarce. Or one can try to have a kid skip a grade, but that can amplify differences between the unusual kids and the others rather than making them smaller.

Because of the scarcity, and the necessity to maintain classroom harmony/discipline, schools have an incentive to focus their special-education dollars on the most troubled kids. Parents and doctors know this, so sometimes they exaggerate the problems, in order to get a share of the pie. Others advise parents to literally harass school officials to provide more, more, more to their kids, in the “squeaky wheel gets the grease” pattern. With public schools, there is no effective customer/vendor feedback to reward honesty.

Private schools may be better in this regard, since the students are considered more like customers, but are obviously more expensive. The cost amplifies further in those numerous jurisdictions where one still pays taxes for educating others’ kids, but gets no share of that tax money for one’s own private-school child. The net effect appears to be that, except for the very high end, typical private schools may find it more economical to refuse problem kids than try to charge extra for them.

In contrast with all that, at home, customizing education to the strengths and weaknesses of the brats is possible to a considerably larger “sigma” than tolerable in a school setting.

Another reason relates to the desire to avoid negative influences. In all but the most selective / disciplined schools, kids unavoidably learn attitudes and behaviors and values that are at variance with one’s family’s standards. Bullying, abuse, political brainwashing, social engineering. boredom, stupid popular youth culture, even diseases join a litany of other school goings-on. They may be an acceptable risk to those who have no choice, but it sure is a step down from a loving, intelligent, civilized adult environment. One does not need to be a religious nut to look down upon this aspect of mass education. One just needs to accept that no detached professional or peer mob will commit as much positive effort to one’s child’s upbringing as a parent might.

A third reason is the time efficiency of public vs. home schooling. Because of the ability to infinitely customize the material, progress can be faster. Since there is no travel time, logistical overheads disappear. Many homeschooling families appear to get as much done in two or three hours as elementary schools do in a whole day, and leave lots of time for extra-curricular stuff. In contrast, with normal schools taking most of the day, they leave little time for at-home enrichment or extra-curriculars without heroic and exhausting measures.

There exist obvious disadvantages too. A parent must leave the workforce for an extended period, something that is just out of the question for many. For those who view their children as a disruption to their former lives, delegating their parenting and education duties to strangers can be a relief. Some may lack the temperament to learn how to teach. Some may entomb their homeschoolers in an antisocial cocoon. Our family has been extraordinarily lucky not to have our project vetoed by such concerns. There may be lots of people who could do it, just have never considered it, with the monumental inertia of the norm. Perhaps someone you know.

So, our experiment formally begins. The local school board has officially excused Eric from attendance, and Stuart is out of preschool. A few months or years later, circumstances may change and force a return to the normal system. But until then, the opportunity is too good to pass up.

Ever since about a year ago, when the Ontario provincial government announced a crazy-generous ‘feed-in-tariff’ program for photovoltaic power generation, I’ve sat on the fence about whether to go for it. As a recap, this scheme, practised in various enlightened jurisdictions around the world, subsidize a personal solar electricity setup. Not just a bit: they pay the solar generator dude 5-10 times market rates for electricity, intending to guarantee a good investment rate of return for 10-20 years.

It is beyond economic farce. Unlike the sunlight, the money does not fall from the heavens. It comes from one’s neighbours in the form of enlarged power bills and/or taxes. This is the redistribution of wealth from those who couldn’t afford to or bring themselves to participate in the scam to those who are willing participants. Considering the system efficiencies and costs involved, there is no economic rationale for it, and only a joke of an environmental one. (Never mind the potential for outright fraud.)

This is where perhaps one might cue some moral outrage. This program specifically promotes and rewards screwing one’s neighbours. Such is the depravity of parts of the modern environmental movement that this is touted as a virtue.

Headline: South Korea will deliver aid to North in October
In other words: Please send more torpedoes and threats at our soldiers. XOXOXO. Luv.

Two great british satires of the news business:
Martin Robbins on web news
Charlie Brooker on tv news