war & peace

The husband I finished watching the new War & Peace limited series last night. We both liked it quite a lot and thought it was well worth viewing.

It was one of the most stunning period productions I think I've ever seen. The costumes and settings were magnificent, and the battle scenes quite compelling. While television CGI can often look cheesy and obvious, we both thought it looked quite realistic in this series.

Most of the cast was exceptional. James Norton, Aisling Loftus, Greta Scacchi, and Jim Broadbent were particular standouts. While Paul Dano is a very talented actor and his work was flawless here, we both thought he was miscast.

If you like period fare, the series is well worth a watch. On the whole, I think War & Peace grew stronger as it went along, so if you're not captivated by the first episode or two, you'll find it well worth your time to stick with it to the end.

breastfeeding hysteria

Whenever I read news stories about people losing their shit because some woman is breastfeeding her child in public, the articles invariably seem to be about incidents in the United States. Why is it some Americans seem more tit phobic than in other non-fundamentalist countries?

A recent news item about an incident in a Connecticut Target store is a perfect example. A woman started breastfeeding her baby in the store's cafe and some old geezer went nuclear. Fortunately, store patrons and employees stepped in to defend her.

Here in Australia, nobody pays much attention when women breastfeed in public, other than a few grinning older men and boys who try to sneak a free titty peak. I've not had any problem breastfeeding Tombo in public, although I once had a dustup (with an American!) when nursing Joey three years ago.

I've wondered before about whether people who were bottle-fed as babies are more obsessed about public breastfeeding. I wish some social scientist would do a study about this to determine if my suspicion is correct.

Of course, if women were routinely seen topless in public in the United States at places like the beach and on network television, like in many countries, Americans might finally get over their tit phobia. But don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen anytime soon.

executed today

I was reading something about World War II yesterday and turned to the Internet for an answer to a question I had. In that process, I discovered a fascinating webpage called Executed Today that's a comprehensive online encyclopedia about all sorts of famous people condemned to death throughout history.

Some are criminals, some are patriots, and some are religious martyrs. The only commonality is that they all were executed. While some photos and artwork are included, I wouldn't call them particularly gruesome; you can see a lot worse in books and elsewhere on the Internet.

The site has been maintained for nine years with daily entries, so it's extremely comprehensive. You can also receive a daily email with the "execution of the day."

By using the "random execution" button, I learned about the hasty exits of notorious Nazi murderer Karl Frank, infamous royal dilittante Marie Antoinette, and philanthropic witch Christenze Kruckow.

david downing downer

Two years ago on this blog I wrote a post heartily recommending British author David Downing's "Nazi noir" espionage novels featuring the fictional British journalist and spy John Russell.

Downing ultimately wrote six novels in the World War II series. After that, he started a new series featuring a World War I era spy named Jack McColl. To date, he's written two of these novels.

After having enjoyed his World War II espionage novels, I was really looking forward to his new series. I was, however, woefully disappointed with this latest effort.

I found his new books to be so inferior to the older series that I actually wondered if they were written by the same author. The characters seemed cliched and unbelievable, the dialog often arch, and the plots awkwardly contrived.

How did this happen? Did the author lose his touch? Or are these actually older books he's had on the shelf and wrote when he was still learning the craft, and now his publisher decided to make a quick buck?

Whatever the answer, I recommend everyone avoid his Jack McColl World War I series. The author really missed with these, and scanning some reader reviews on Good Reads and elsewhere, I see I am not alone in my opinion.

beyond catastrophic

This past week has seen Donald Trump's campaign go from imploding disaster to imploding disaster. Things have gotten progressively worse for him week by week since he became the presumptive nominee, but this week topped them all -- the campaign is now failing catastrophically.

Monday started with the news that his campaign manager had been fired, itself a sign that a candidate is in serious trouble, and no replacement was lined up to take over. That was followed by the devastating news that Trump had only raised a paltry $3.1 million in May and ended the month with a mere $1.3 million in the bank.

In comparison, his opponent raised more than $28 million in May and has more than $40 million in the bank. Trump now has no money to pay for advertising because he's in such dire shape.

To add insult to injury, roughly a third of Trump's campaign expenses are being paid to his own companies.

He closed out the week with a surreal, babbling press conference that made him sound like had a tenuous grasp on reality. Within a few minutes of praising Brexit, he then blamed its passage on President Obama, who has nothing to do with running the European Union or Great Britain. Trump did not seem to realize that Brexit failed to pass in Scotland, the very site of his press event.

Trump's basic argument about why he should be elected President is that, as a self-proclaimed successful businessman, he would do a better job running the country than the usual crowd of politicians.

His disastrously inept campaign, however, completely negates that claim. If he was better than a politician, he should be running a stunningly successful campaign that would shame any politician and astound political scientists.

The crashing Hindenburg quality of his campaign right now gives voters a pretty good idea of how he would be a walking disaster as President.

One ray of sunshine in all of this is a growing movement by Republican delegates to dump Trump and elect another candidate. Media reports say hundreds of delegates are already on board with this plan.

Time will only tell if this comes to pass.

awakening my inner lesbian

I've written twice before on this blog about women who for some reason awaken the inner lesbian in me, normally dormant 99.99 percent of the time.

This girl, seen also in the photo below, for whatever reason awakened my normally comatose sappho doppelganger.

Look back at the pictures with my previous posts and also this one, I see something similar in all three -- guileless women with wide, submissive eyes.

That seems to suggest my inner lesbian is a dominant bitch who wants to go all alpha on doe-eyed waifs. Wherever she is, she seems to be deep in my subconscious.

Once again, I showed my husband the pictures and he was not impressed. "She's sort of flabby, actually," he said. "She doesn't have very good muscle definition."

pierced tongue horror story

I had my regular six-month hygienist and dentist appointment yesterday, which went without incident, as they always do. In the wrap-up chit-chat, I asked the dentist if people with pierced tongues, lips, and cheeks had to remove their jewelry before dental work.

She said they should, but it's not always possible. That segued into talk about oral infections that result from piercings in and around the mouth.

At that point, she gleefully told me a horror story involving one of her own patients who contracted a horrible infection resulting from her tongue piercing. The untreated infection became so severe, which led to other complications, and she had to have parts of her tongue, gums, and jawbone removed in a series of ever more aggressive surgeries.

That resulted in permanent scars, disfigurement, and a lifetime speech impediment because part of the woman's tongue was gone for good.

Being the ghoul that I am, later at home, I Googled something like "pierced tongue horror stories" and found one much worse than my dentist's experience.

I know many women get pierced tongues because they think they'll give better blowjobs as a result. But icecubes or olives in your mouth while you're going down on him will achieve the same results without disfiguring yourself for life.

luck, chance, and destiny

A recent article in The Atlantic looked at why people tend to underestimate how luck shapes their successes in life. I've written here before about how I scoff at the idea of luck, while my husband sincerely believes some people are inherently lucky.

After reading the linked article, I realized some people may use a different definition for luck than I do. The article's author is essentially using the word luck as a synonym for random chance.

Let's say we're playing roulette with fifty numbers on the wheel, one through fifty. Each of us must spin the wheel three times. You do it thrice and land on the numbers 14, 47, and 22. I spin the wheel and land on 25 three times in a row.

Am I lucky? Was it luck that gave me some kind of edge, some kind of a special charm, something magical or supernatural?

Now both the author of the linked article and I would say hitting the same number three times in a row was simply a random chance. Any of us has a one in 125,000 chance of hitting three 25s, or one in a 2,500 chance of hitting the same three numbers in a row.

My husband, however, would believe that some kind of special blessing with a sort of magical or supernatural power would mean I have a better chance of getting the same three numbers in a row. To me, that's baloney, and it amuses me that someone who otherwise is so logical and rational would be superstitious like this.

On a related note, the linked article nicely shows how many people underestimate the significance of random events in their lives and how those events influence their successes. This makes perfect sense to me.

If you're born in an upper middle class family to successful professional parents, you have some inherent advantages when compared to a person born in a poor family to a single parent in a third-world nation. On the racetrack of life, you are born with a head start.

Life is a series of random events during which we seek to find order and purpose. Some may choose to believe a hidden hand is giving some of us an extra advantage, but others of us realize there are many more random events influencing our destiny than we realize.

comic book investments

A recent article in The Fiscal Times revealed that rare comic books have outperformed the stock market over the last eight years.

The capital gain aside, IMHO comic books seem like a much riskier investment than a portfolio of top-rated blue-chip stocks.

For one, comic books don't pay dividends like many stocks do. The only way to recoup your gain is by selling the collectibles, but that's not something you can do inside of a minute like with stock shares.

Then there's the whole fragility issue with comic books. They were cheaply printed so they must be preserved using conservation standards and protected from fire and other perils.

Plus, you need to insure them. So the only way to keep your comic books safe is in a bank security deposit box, but then you can't enjoy them -- although people aren't buying hugely expensive pulp comics for their reading pleasure, anyway.

In contrast, shares of stock are held for you by a broker at no charge. Your house can burn to the ground or you escape to Switzerland, and your stock portfolio is as close as the nearest internet connection.

I can understand buying a painting or antique, because such works are unique and cannot be recreated again by their creators. But a comic book was mass produced and very cheaply printed when first released.

When you buy an old comic book for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, you're buying a used pulp paper booklet that sold for a nickle or dime in its day.

Congratulations to the people making a fortune buying and selling rare comic books, but this fiscally prudent girl will stick to her boring stock portfolio. My investments can't be eaten by silverfish.

As for prices, the mint condition first edition of Batman seen below sold for more than $1 million US. That's a bargain, however, compared to the Superman record holder at more than $3 million US. Both comics sold for only a dime when new.

the american presidency project

I happened on the wonderfully wonky American Presidency Project yesterday, a comprehensive website about American presidents through history with tons of links and all sorts of election data.

Where else could you find a complete repository of transcripts for every one of Harry Truman's press conferences? Or the full text of James Garfield's Inaugural Address? Or all of James Monroe's Presidential Proclamations?

Who knew that prohibitions on importing plaster of Paris was a big issue in 1818? I didn't until I visited the website.

The page with statistics about every presidential election, complete with maps, is a trivia goldmine.

I love when I find websites like this, but I also hate it, too, because they can be a timesuck. I limit my internet time to two hours a day, and sites like this tempt me to break that self-imposed rule.

If you like politics and history, you'll probably enjoy the website, too, which is maintained at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

use your parking brake

The popular young actor Anton Yelchin died yesterday in a freak accident outside his home. He is best known for playing Chekov in the Star Trek reboot movies.

Yelchin was found dead in his driveway, pinned between his car and a brick mailbox post. His vehicle was still running and in neutral but the parking brake was not engaged.

This is certainly not the first time someone has died in this kind of entirely avoidable accident. Far too many drivers assume "neutral" or "park" is the same thing as using your parking brake.

In short: it is not.

A car can drift or coast when the parking brake is not engaged even if the transmission is in neutral or park. Whenever you step out of your car, even if only for a few seconds, you should always engage your parking brake. This is a no-brainer.

I'm a stick chick, so I've always driven a manual transmission. If you drive a stick, you know you don't have a choice -- you must use your parking brake. That might be why stick people use the parking brake when driving a vehicle with an automatic transmission because the habit is so ingrained.

It takes all of a half second to engage or release a parking brake. There is no excuse not to use it. Your life may depend on it.

release the measurements

I wrote a post a few months back about how mocking Donald Trump's tiny child-sized hands was borderline cruel, but I loathe him much more now than I did then so I'm less forgiving. Besides, Trump mocked a disabled reporter, so what's good for the goose is good for the gander and all that.

I freely admit this political commercial made me laugh. Trump has such an incredibly thin skin that he deserves to be taunted for something he'd quickly mock in someone else if they had tiny digits and he didn't.

The political action committee that put this together also has a website.

fallen cards

The husband and I just finished watching the fourth season of the American version of House of Cards. In short, both of us were somewhat disappointed.

The series ironically succumbed to the metaphorical equivalent of its title -- some of the house of cards tumbled down. While the first three seasons were strongly character driven, the fourth season was the opposite: plot driven with the characters often just holding on for the ride. And some of those plot threads are dropped rather quickly after a long build-up.

The season did have some high points. President Frank Underwood once again breaks the fourth wall and speaks directly to the audience several times in each episode, a device used successfully in the first season and again here but largely dropped in the second and third seasons.

Of all the characters, Underwood is given the most to work with in the fourth season, and Kevin Spacey is often in top form. There are a few times when the President allows his inner pit viper to control him and he's absolutely chilling.

The Doug Stemper character also is developed nicely with some of the season's best scenes. He's a fascinating dichotomy, alternating between slavish passive loyalty and an obsessive need to dominate.

Robin Wright, who plays the first lady, also directed some of this season's episodes and I think they were the weakest. Actors directing themselves and their fellow players often cannot stop themselves from chewing scenery, and that happened here at times.

We're not sorry we watched and will come back for the fifth season. The episodes had a lot of strong moments overall and still are better than a lot of television out there, but they're not at the level of the earlier seasons.

I'm hoping they'll rise to an even higher level with the next one.

disconnected

We are without landline and internet for three or four days, for not entirely known reasons. I am updating this from a public internet hotspot.

The exact reason for this disconnect is unclear. We lost power the night before last night for several hours, but when it came back up, the phone and internet did not.

The problem may be the master router, or whatever it's called, which serves our neighborhood, and that cannot be fixed until at least Monday for amorphous reasons about understaffing. So we and our neighbors are plunged into an earlier decade.

We have mobile phones, of course, so the landline is no big loss, but life without an instant internet connection is annoying. I cannot check email, read the news, or visit any of my regular online diversions.

So I am experiencing a sort of internet withdrawl. There are no physical cravings, of course, but I have the sense of being adrift in a timeless world. The children are too young to care and thus utterly oblivious to this disconnection.

Lack of access means losing touch with life back in the United States, albeit only for a few days. I suspect that's the biggest reason I feel adrift -- home seems very, very far away at times like this.

electra complex

Every woman marries her father. I have heard variations of that expression more times than I can count. So is it true?

Among women I know where I also know both their husband and father, in some instances this seems to be true, but in more cases the saying seems wrong.

For me, this idea could not be more off the mark. My husband is almost nothing like my father. They're polar opposites in terms of interests, personalities, temperament, values, life view, and much more.

In some ways, my husband is like my brother, but then my brother isn't much like my father. Where my brother and husband overlap, it's in things that aren't like my father at all.

Although I've always got along with my father better than my mother, that's like saying the United States gets along better with Russia than North Korea. In all honesty, there's little about my father I admire beyond his professional achievements. I have no strong father/daughter memories because he was nearly invisible in my childhood years (the same for my mother, but that's another story).

With one exception, men I dated were not like my father. While in many ways they weren't like my husband, in some ways they were.

The only exception was the nightmare boyfriend from hell, who turned into something like my father the longer I was with him, before he turned into a crazed obsessed stalker who went way off the deep end.

Freudians have theories about women and their fathers -- the so-called Electra Complex. For a variety of reasons, according to them, some women become father fixated. Some Freudians will say this may explain why a woman marries a version of her father.

In all candor, I wonder if this business about women marrying a version of their father is another "rule" like deaths comes in threes. If you look for a pattern, even when one doesn't really exist, you'll find one.

Why? Because superstition often trumps logic.

pages of death

This 1962 "public service" film is to pornography what Reefer Madness was to the drug scene. It was designed to scare the hell out of people about the evils of porn.

See what happens if you watch porn? You do that, you could end up strangling girls out at the city dump.

The production values and the acting are a hoot, particularly the one playing Marian, Paul's mother. The man playing the announcer at the very beginning and end of the film is the father of Mark Harmon of NCIS fame.

This film was funded by notorious anti-pornography crusader Charles Keating, who later became much more famous as the central figure in the 1990s savings and loan scandal. Keating was convicted and spent four and a half years in prison.

red rock canyon

A Tumblr page I subscribe to, called America's Great Outdoors, sometimes features locations I've visited in the United States. As part of my continuing anti-homesickness project, I use the site to feed my need to experience elements of my homeland.

The other day they featured a photograph of Red Rock Canyon, which I visited many times when I lived in Las Vegas. It is one of my all-time favorite places.

Depending on the time of day, it's about twenty to thirty minutes west of the Strip and is the absolute antithesis of a Vegas experience. The site is wide open, serene, and completely restorative.

My favorite time of day to visit was around sunset into twilight. Even in the height of summer, the temperatures are not unpleasant at that time of the day because the desert usually cools off fairly quickly after the sun is gone.

If you ever visit Vegas and want a sane oasis away from the Strip, you could not do any better than Red Rock Canyon.

orlando

Another mass shooting has happened in the United States, this time the worst in history. Reading the American press coverage and the Australian coverage is a lesson in stark contrasts.

I recognize we have the Second Amendment in the US and that cannot be ignored. At the same time, something is very wrong with American society where shootings have become commonplace and nothing seems to be done to resolve the crisis.

The murder rate per capita and gun crime rate per capita are both much higher in the United States than in Australia, which has stricter firearm laws. Yes, you can murder someone with a kitchen knife or a garden hoe, but it's more difficult for a variety of reasons. Mass murder with a non-firearm weapon is infinitely more difficult.

Australia had several mass shootings in the later twentieth century and significantly revised its firearm laws as a result. True, the country had no Second Amendmen equivalent. But at least Australians said "enough is enough" and decided to do something about it.

Meanwhile, in the United States, I would be very surprised if anything significant changes because of this latest massacre. As an American living outside my homeland, I am hard pressed to answer when asked to explain why that is the state of affairs.

the enemy of my enemy

I've never been a huge fan of Elizabeth Warren. However, the old adage holds that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Here she rips Donald Trump's balls off with her bare hands on live television and then tosses them into a whirring blender, so she's now okay in my book.

Trump is vowed he's going to be more statesman like in the future, but I think a promise like that will keep as long as an icecube on a Mojave highway at high noon.

Hence, when politicians make public comments like this, I think they're doing it in part to egg him on so he'll make some of his trademark asshat comments once again.

The media happily reports stuff like this with glee. After Trump mused in front of them about how the media needs to be policed, and after repeatedly lashing out at them in press conferences, they're only too happy to hoist him on his own petard.

Nearly every new day brings some unsavory revelation about Trump, which puts him on the defensive rather than the offensive. He's terrible at crisis management and I hope this will really start to erode his support.

the man with $100,000 breasts

Today I learned the E! cable channel has a program called Botched, so-called reality television where people can have plastic surgery disasters reversed. That sounds like an entertaining time suck, so I'll avoid that.

One recent episode has garnered some headlines and featured a man who, on a dare, had breasts implanted like a woman and earned a $100,000 bet. Now after having lady tits for more than fifteen years, he wanted them removed.

Some of the brouhaha has erupted because the show did not censor his man tits during the program like they do for actual female tits that also have implants. I can think of several million issues that are more pressing than that, but obviously other people have different priorities.

I can understand the man having the original tit job to earn $100,000. You have the tits put in, recover, collect your hundred grand, then have them out again.

Why a man would keep them for years, however, when he's not trying to make any kind of gender change statement, doesn't make any sense. The man in question seems like something of a flake, given other strange things he has done in his life, so trying to sort reason out of him might not be a wise investment of time.

I didn't include a picture of Mr. Breasts but if you click through the link above you can see them.

defiant kids make striving adults

A recent study found that defiant kids who break rules tend to be more successful in their careers and/or earn more as adults.

I guess that's good news if you measure success in terms of job and money, but it sounds to me it's also a great way to cultivate unhappy, screwed up adults. If you're driven to succeed at all cost and/or to earn as much money as possible, you probably become avaricious and pretty unpleasant.

In short, you could turn out to be a miserable greedy asshole.

I'd much rather have a happy child who isn't stressed out and constantly grabbing for the brass ring. Yes, I would like my kids to succeed, but I don't want them to do so at all costs.

Both of my parents are doctors, but my mother has always been the more success driven of the two. She has accomplished much more in her career than my father.

With that said, I think my mother is one of the unhappiest people I've ever known. She's not unhappy in a suicidal way -- she's a deadly serious, unsmiling, aloof iceberg. If you've ever seen Ordinary People, the Mary Tyler Moore character could be my mother's twin.

I've often wondered if such a personality trait was hereditary, because my two sisters are cut much from the same cloth. Hopefully this will not be something I pass down to my children.

johnny depp is a mess

The gossip website Page Six has a new article chronicling Johnny Depp's rise and fall.

As you may know, his current wife Amber Heard has filed for divorce and accused him of domestic abuse. Heard has released photos to the media showing her injured face, which she blames on her husband.

Depp is a brilliant actor, but his life offscreen is a mess that just keeps getting worse. He looks terrible, covered with trashy tattoos, wearing women's makeup, and sporting an entire estate sale's worth of junk jewelry.

An old expression holds that power corrupts, but by that same token, money corrupts in a different manner. Depp seems to have much more money than he does sense and therein lies his possible ruin.

Depp once was incredibly handsome and just oozed sex appeal, as you can see in the 1997 magazine cover below. Now, however, as you can see in the recent picture, he's just a sad clown.

tramp stamps

When I'm looking around for erotic photos to use on my Tumblr, I'll usually reject any image that features a woman with a tramp stamp.

That may sound petty or arbitrary, but tramp stamps have become such a cliche that they're laughable. The eroticism of the image is diminished IMHO by such a passé fad, and I don't use humor on Tumblr.

With time, I think tramp stamps will only become more laughable, like mullets and conical bras. But mullets could always be cut off when the fad had run its course and a conical bra could be tossed in the trash.

But a tramp stamp is a cliche that will shame you for the rest of your life.

I never felt the bern

With the exception of the District of Columbia primary next week, the final presidential primaries are today. The Associated Press and other media outlets have already said Hillary Clinton has the necessary delegates to be the presumptive nominee.

That means she'll square off against Donald Trump in the fall.

A few weeks back I wrote a post about Trump versus Clinton where I said in so many words that she was the lesser of two evils and thus I hoped she won.

Yesterday, an occasional visitor just happened to read that piece and shot me an email. The essence of it was "but what about Bernie Sanders?" The writer then tried to sell me on that third candidate.

Thanks but no thanks. I'm a millennial but, unlike many people my age, I never felt "the bern." Why? Because the man talked up some admirable ideas that had utterly not a chance in hell of becoming law.

The reality is, because of gerrymandering, the House of Representatives will almost certainly be in Republican control until at least 2022, when the next census will shuffle the congressional maps. A GOP house would never pass the sweeping programs Sanders has proposed or anything close to them.

Now his supporters say, once he was in office, he would build enough public support for the programs and then Congress would fall in line. My response is such an idea is hopelessly naive, nothing short of magical thinking.

Sanders talked a lot about "revolution" but that was just talk. He had no revolution. Big rallies and lots of tweets are not a revolution.

If he truly wanted a revolution, he should've brought one to the playing field. When he announced his candidacy in 2015, he should've done it with 435 House candidates and 34 Senate candidates standing behind him. All of them together would've run under his presidential candidacy, promising to bring his plans to a vote if elected.

That would've been a revolution. But it was never to be.

If you're in one of the six states voting today, I hope you will vote. Democracy is a valuable right that should never be taken for granted.

happy women want more sex

New York magazine recently published a short article asking why some couples have so much more sex than others. For answers, they turned to a recent scientific study on the subject.

In a nutshell, the study found that a woman is the deciding factor in this equation. As the "gatekeeper," if she's happy and agreeable, there's a good chance the couple is having lots more sex.

The fact that the woman is the key doesn't surprise me. Man are almost always on board for humping -- what man isn't up for sex 24/7?

The article goes into more details with other variables, but the takeaway for me is "happy and agreeable." Men might keep that in mind on a blind date; if she's moody and tetchy, pull the ripcord and bail early.

Without sounding like a blowhard, I think I'm almost always happy and agreeable. That might explain why my husband and I have lots of sex.

For his part, he's happy and agreeable, too. That's a must for me, although that didn't seem important in the referenced article.

I prefer spending time with a happy, agreeable man. Life's too short to be handcuffed to a thundercloud.

vermin supreme

Today I learned a candidate by the name of Vermin Love Supreme is running for President of the United States. As of this writing, he's already won several hundred votes.

I'll admit this made me laugh in a slight chuckle sort of way. At the same time, American politics is already enough of a circus that we don't need any more clowns in the ring.

Politics may be entertaining but it shouldn't be entertainment IMHO. Comics should pimp themselves someplace else.

And people shouldn't waste their vote like this at the ballot box. Countless hundreds of millions around the world don't have the right to vote. Those of us who do should use that right to the best of our ability.

big bear

I showed this video to my son, who enjoyed it thoroughly. He did, however, have a question after seeing it.

"Where does he poop?" I confess I had the same thought when I first saw this. I chalk that up to either (1) I'm still at the emotional level of a three-year-old or (2) I spend so much time with a three-year-old that I'm thinking like one more and more.

the freeze game

You've probably read about the three-year-old boy who crawled into a gorilla enclosure at the Cincinnati zoo over the weekend. After a 450-pound male gorilla dragged and threw the boy around, the animal was shot to prevent further injury to the child.

A lot of questions have been raised about whether the enclosure was safely sealed and whether the child was properly supervised by a parent.

Bystanders had heard the boy say he was going into the enclosure, and his mother responded, "No you're not, no you're not." She was then distracted by other children with her, and at that moment, the kid defied her, slipped past a fence, and tumbled into the moat where he was grabbed by the gorilla.

What struck me most about this was the mother's admonition "no you're not" and how the kid completely ignored her. As the mother of a three-year-old boy, that tells me she has allowed the child to control her.

I am not a tyrant. I don't beat my child. I don't send him to bed without his supper. Nevertheless, he knows what a firm "no" means. He knows that "no" is absolute.

About a year ago, because Australia is known to have poisonous snakes that turn up in residential neighborhoods, my husband and I decided to teach our son "the freeze game."

Our son thinks it's a game, but it's something we've taught in the event of an emergency. We practice freezing together, and when our son breaks his record for standing still without moving, he's rewarded with a treat.

He's up to almost two minutes now. He thinks it's hysterical fun. He'll giggle and laugh but remain otherwise completely still.

It's a game for him but not for us. We taught him this, like some Australian parents do, if he ever ends up very close to a dangerous situation and freezing would be the best way to protect him until the snake or similar danger moved on.

In the zoo situation, had the mother taught her child a similar game, he might never have been in any danger.

We're also teaching our son other protective measures now that he's a little older, like how to telephone for help, how to run away and hide if anyone ever threatens him, and how to seek help if he's ever in any danger.

You don't want to be paranoid as a parent. But you also don't want to be complacent. Emergencies can happen.

trump's 381 damning pages

On Tuesday, a federal judge unsealed 381 pages of secret documents relating to Donald Trump's controversial and dubious Trump University. They are now available online for free in their entirety.

Trump fought like a rabid weasel to stop these documents from being released but failed in that attempt.

These are the previously top-secret documents the Trump University "faculty" used to sucker people into signing up for "courses," some of which cost as much as $35,000, plus internal memos, depositions, and more. Many veterans and seniors were hoodwinked by the Trump University scam.

Three lawsuits are now pending against Trump regarding this now bankrupt endeavor in addition to legal proceedings over the improper use of the word "university" for an unaccredited, unlicensed for-profit business.

A New York lawsuit brought by the state attorney general is expected to go to trial sometime before the fall election. Trump will have to testify in his defense at that trial.

A pair of California class action lawsuits go to trial in November right after the election (these documents were released by the judge in that case). A third trial is expected to take place early next year in a Florida case.

Trump fought to have all three of these lawsuits dismissed and failed each time. He appealed those dismissals and failed each time. This from the man who claims to be a winner.

The bottom line is that Trump said he started this "university" to help people and wouldn't make a dime from the endeavor. That's a bold-face lie -- he wrote checks to himself, which he signed, for $5 million from profits in this endeavor.

These lawsuits could end up costing him hundreds of millions of dollars. Hopefully, they will help cost him the election, too.

croc attack

The news here is filled with reports about a woman from outside of Sydney who is missing and feared dead in the crocodile-infested waters of a national park in far north Queensland.

Although the area where the woman was last seen is heavily posted with warning signs against swimming in the water, she nonetheless went for a late-night swim after dark with a friend.

The pair were not in the water long when the sixteen-foot-long creature attacked. The friend managed to escape with only a minor graze on her arm but her friend was pulled away and disappeared.

Adult crocs typically will drag prey further into the water and then drown it before consuming the corpse. Crocodiles in Northern Australia number around 100,000 and are known to attack people on land who stand too close to the water's edge.

In a cruel twist of irony, the two women were on the trip were celebrating the successful cancer treatment of the croc attack survivor.

I am just dumbfounded that these intelligent, adult women decided on a night swim in crocodile infested waters after ignoring signs plastered all over the place. This is certainly not the first time an attack like this took place.

When asked at a press conference how such attacks could be prevented in the future, a local politician responded, "You can't legislate against human stupidity." He's right.