Baby Danny Is Here!

Our new son arrived yesterday early arvo (that's afternoon for you yanks.). Quite a big baby, so mum's labour was pretty intense for a while. Mum and Dan are due to be brought home first thing tomorrow. More from her soon I'm sure.

if you're reading this...

If you're reading this, there's a good chance I went into labor sometime since I posted the previous day's entry. I pre-wrote this entry several weeks ago and kept moving it up a day at a time so it wouldn't appear unless I was unable to write an entry.

So if you're seeing this, it means I have otherwise been very occupied. If there's any news, I will ask the husband to post something.

ministry of silly walks

Someone posted this short loop online showing a brief passage of the elaborately absurd daily ceremony that occurs on the India/Pakistan border. I then Googled and found this explanatory article from a few years ago.

It's no wonder relations between those two countries are in the shitter if they think a bizarre floorshow like this somehow bolsters their national image. That whole nonsense looks like something little boys would do on a playground. Hopefully a mishap at this bizarre ceremony will never accidentally kickstart a war.

When I see stuff like this, I think: that would never happen if the world was run by women.

kate the great

I've written twice before about how I had recently discovered British writer Kate Atkinson's novels and how much I enjoyed reading them.

I had originally planned to read another one every few months, but I decided I didn't need to be so self-restraining. What if I died and hadn't finished all her books?

As of yesterday, I've now read six of her ten published novels and have loved every one. I will start on another one soon, depending on Baby Three's schedule. Atkinson has such a beautiful writing style with a razor sharp focus on character. Her books are also highly inventive as they explore multiple generations of damaged and dysfunctional families.

If you're a reader and enjoy literary fiction with a commercial twist and are not already familiar with Atkinson, do check her out.

the lady was a spy

I always find spy stories fascinating -- who doesn't? -- so this true-life story about a young Jewish woman who went into Nazi Germany as an undercover operative definitely fit the bill. She must've had incredible nerves of steel in order to pull this off.

Many of us hope we would have done the same things in these circumstances, that we could muster the courage to go into the enemies' camp and, day-in-and-day out, pretend to be someone we weren't. But the reality is, I'm afraid, that few of us could actually do this.

The former spy wrote a book about her experiences and that's definitely been added to my "must read" list.

damned statistics

I am one of those people who think about plane crashes when I'm getting ready to fly and even on the flight itself. I know that any given passenger has about a one in 100,000 chance of dying in an accident on any given flight.

I don't obsess about this but I do think about it. The same is true for childbirth. I know that about eight out of every 100,000 women in Australia die during childbirth. I'm thinking about that now and will randomly think about it again until labor is over.

My husband hates this kind of talk so I don't do it in front of him. He's more superstitious than I am.

Here's an interesting statistic -- a woman is five times more likely to die in childbirth in some US states than in Australia. That's scary. If I went into labor on a flight over the US, I'd want the pilot to make an emergency landing in Texas, which has better stats, than Louisiana.

Of course, that could be the one-in-100,000 planes that crashes. So it might not matter in the end. Dead is dead, no matter how it happens.

don't fight in public

I happened to witness, on two occasions in recent days, two different couples having public spats. I know one of the couples, but the others were strangers to me.

In the first instance, I was exiting my doctor's office with my husband and we passed an unknown couple having a public argument. In the second example, the couple was having a spat outside the supermarket on their way to their car. We know both of them and they're both lovely people.

In the first instance, the woman was fishing in her purse while they were arguing and, unknowing, dropped her wallet on the sidewalk. But she was so absorbed in her dispute she didn't even notice her error. If it wasn't for my husband and I spotting it -- and my husband alerting her to the fact -- she may have left it behind.

In the second instance, the couple didn't even notice they almost walked in front of a moving car as they hissed and spat. A blaring horn barely got their attention. And they were oblivious to the fact that we were only a few feet away. If we were neighborhood gossips (which we're not), it could have been embarrassing for them.

Both of these incidents taught me a lesson, one all urban dwellers should heed -- don't spat in public. It makes you more vulnerable to danger because you drop your situational awareness. You're trapped by and blinded by your squabble.

big shaggy beard

A man who brought a delivery to the house yesterday had a long, very bushy beard that caught my attention, sort of like the one seen in the picture below but even longer and bushier. He was a good looking man and the beard complemented him nicely.

My husband has grown beards on occasion but nowhere near that long. His are short and well groomed. But I have to say I'm curious what it would be like to kiss a man with a big bush like that. And what's it feel like on your thighs when he goes down on you?

I was dying to ask the man if the woman in his life liked oral with that big bushy thing, but of course I didn't. I resisted the temptation. And I also wondered if I wasn't so overripe and ready to burst open like a milkweed pod would I even be thinking about this.

puppies by the pound

I though this puppy pileup was beyond adorable. Presumably they're from more than one litter -- two or maybe three. I love how the ones in the back seem like they're gossiping among themselves until they realize handouts have arrived.

drunken history

The Atlantic is running a fascinating and very short little item in their latest issue about how one theory holds that the catalyst for the agricultural revolution of 9000 BC wasn't bread or food crops. It was beer.

And with beer came power. And with power came wealth.

This made me wonder if knowledge of how to make beer was originally limited to certain clans or tribes. If you knew how to make beer but none of your neighboring tribes did, then that gave you status, wealth, and control.

The development of agriculture may have gone hand in hand with development of monopoly. And maybe with the development of war.

a tad concerned

I had my weekly ob-gyn appointment yesterday and my doctor said I am zero percent dilated. The same thing happened with my last two pregnancies -- I passed my due date and remained undilated.

"If nothing's changed this time next week," the doctor said, "we need to start talking about inducing labor."

Ugh. I don't want that, but I also realize once I'm two weeks past my due date, the doctor will want to either induce labor or schedule a cesarean.

I'm hoping to avoid induced labor if I can. Many women report that it's much more painful than conventional labor. And, of course, I don't want a surgical delivery.

I have a friend who was two weeks late and went in to be induced. On the way into the hospital building, her water broke and she went into labor without incident. Talk about waiting until the last possible moment.

So let's go, Baby Daniel. Time to get this show on the road.

photographic pet peeve

I was looking at a magazine offline yesterday and one of the ads reminded me of a photographic pet peeve -- lens flares. If you don't know what they are, they happen when a light source, often the sun, reflects on a camera's curved convex lens, creating a flaw seen in the photo that would not be seen by the naked eye.

The picture below has a good example of a lens flare. The sun is reflecting on the camera's curved glass, creating a prismatic effect that was not actually on her face. That's why her left eye is not dilated any differently than the right.

If you're a model, you don't want any lens flare on any photo where you appear that would distract from or obscure your face. Looking again at the photo below, notice how your eye is drawn first to the thing on her eye and not her pretty face.

Some photographers like lens flares but many consider them amateurish and cliched. IMHO, they show that the photographer doesn't have enough skill to compensate for a lighting challenge. A good one will conquer a lens flare, not surrender to it.

Separate

Last month I wrote an entry which linked to a New Yorker article that discussed America's racial history and the Supreme Court case of Plessy v. Ferguson that upheld "separate but equal" segregation.

That article discussed a new book titled Separate--The Story of Plessy v. Ferguson, and America's Journey from Slavery to Segregation that had just been published. Since I wrote that earlier entry, I had a chance to read the book, finishing it over the weekend.

If you're interested in American history, I heartily recommend the book. I found it extremely well written. I also learned a great deal.

For instance, more than a century before Rosa Parks took her now famous ride, people of color were testing race restrictions on trains and being arrested and suing in the process. The big difference was that courts overwhelming ruled against non-white litigants in that era. Yet they kept trying.

I found myself wondering at first why people of color in the nineteenth and early twentieth century weren't more assertive in demanding their rights. But then a detailed discussion of lynching reminded me how most people were "kept in their place."

As well, lacking access to the leading and limited mass media outlets of the era, and entirely without any kind of social media, non-whites were isolated in a way that's no longer possible today. Coupled with the inferior education they received because of segregation, many of them lacked the necessary literacy skills to communicate with anyone outside their own communities.

For anyone who might wax nostalgic for a simpler nineteenth century America, Separate will quickly disabuse you of that notion.

grande dame

Seen below is a photograph of a rare geriatric African elephant that is more than sixty years old (enlargement). This was taken shortly before her death from natural causes.

The photographer wrote a descriptive article, accompanied by more images of this extraordinary animal, about how he captured his shots. Her huge, sweeping tusks are only seen on aged animals because it takes a long lifetime to reach that size.

What's particularly rare -- and sad -- about this creature is how she managed to live a full life without being poached. Africa's elephant population has been decimated by poachers who kill the animals and then sell their tusks into the international black market.

It is more likely than not that, within our lifetimes, African elephants in the wild will become extinct. The only ones that will survive are those in captivity.

3D printed houses

I was reading offline about how various tech companies have developed a process to "3D print" concrete houses. While this isn't the article in question, it does give you a good idea of the process.

While this is a great idea because it creates safe, sturdy, inexpensive housing, I think this process has a way to go before it produces an aesthetically pleasing house. Right now, the results look more like something the military might build in occupied territory as opposed to a warm family home.

I also wonder if this process really should be called "3D printing." That phrase was born because so-called "3D printers" use a process somewhat similar to that of an inkjet printer.

"Printing," as a word, means the process of applying ink to paper. But "3D printing" is really a fabrication process where software-directed hardware builds layer upon layer of a material on a surface. In some ways its similar to printing but in many other ways it's not.

banned versus censored

In response to the mass shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand, the online community Reddit banned two groups (called subreddits) where people were sharing live footage of the massacres that apparently was shot by the suspected gunman. One group was "Watch People Die" and the other was simply titled "Gore."

Not surprisingly, some people are outraged at this action and decry the decision as "censorship." Others -- and that includes me -- assert that Reddit is a privately owned website and it may include or exclude any content it wishes.

Technically, censorship only occurs when its done by a government official. A censor is a public official who approves or forbids certain content.

When it's done by a privately owned entity like a magazine or newspaper or website, then it's called editorial control. Reddit may choose to prohibit violent content the same way Redbook magazine may choose to prohibit photographs of topless housewives.

If you don't like it, start your own website, fund it, and publish whatever you want. No one's stopping you. You just can't do it on Reddit.

Q-tip horror story

When I was a child, my MD parents were forever warning me not to put things in my ears. Like most children, I obeyed them in their presence then did it anyway in the privacy of my bedroom or bathroom.

Reading this horror story about a man who ended up with a severe skull infection, crippling headaches, and neurological effects after getting part of a cotton swab caught in his ear has sworn me off ever putting a Q-tip inside my ear again.

What makes the tale all the scarier is the fact that he didn't know part of the swab was left behind and it took several years for the infection to run rampant. Which means any Q-tip I put inside my ears in, say, the last five years could have left a ticking bacterial timebomb inside my head.

I need to stop reading articles like this. But at least if I see any of my children putting anything in their ears, I can tell them this horror story, which is a lot more specific than the general warning from my parents of "you could get an infection."

schools for scandal

The big, buzzy scandal story this week is the indictment of dozens of parents on a variety of charges, from bribing exam administrators to facilitate test cheating to bribing athletic coaches to say their children had accomplishments that didn't actually exist.

The parents' goal in this endeavor was to secure their children's admission to elite universities that likely would not admit them. The largest bribes exceeded $1 million and several famous names were found on the list of indictments, including Hollywood actors Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin.

The students reportedly did not know their parents were trying to cheat them into top schools. However, given that some were coached with inside information, they must've been dimwitted if they didn't suspect something.

With their indictments, however, these parents were unwittingly teaching their children that cheating is the way to succeed. They arguably will also have tainted their chances to get into any school legitimately. You have to wonder if these parents ever stepped back and asked themselves why they were so determined, at all costs, to get something for their children they didn't deserve.

If their kids couldn't get into these schools on their own abilities, chances are they wouldn't fare well academically once enrolled. So the parents may have ended up hurting their kids' chances, not helping them.

pussy cupcakes!

How is it that I'm just now learning there's such a thing as pussy cupcakes? The internet is full of them!

I like to bake but honestly I don't think I'd go to all the trouble of attempting this more than once. Still, the results are highly creative. And I'd think pussy cupcakes would be more popular than cock and balls cupcakes. I can't see a lot of straight men wanting to eat those nor lick off the icing.

home stretch

I'm now in the final stretch of my pregnancy with my due date coming next week. I will not be surprised if I'm late again like I was with the first two children.

Still, I know that any minute now my water could break or labor could begin. This will also likely be my last pregnancy, so I've been thinking about the whole childbirth "experience" a lot as of late.

I can think of no other experience in my life like waiting for childbirth to happen, with one possible exception. Life carries on like usual until suddenly it doesn't. Day-to-day planning always includes the sudden labor contingency now. I don't travel far from the house without my husband in case my water breaks. I sit on folded towels at home.

The only life parallel I can think of is that it's like waiting for an elderly, ill relative to die. You know it could happen any minute but you carry on until then. It was like this when my grandfather died. We knew he was in final days but, until then, we kept ourselves busy but close at hand and ready.

My hormones are out of control right now, so writing this made me a bit weepy. My final experience of childbirth. I keep thinking about meeting my youngest child any day now, someone who likely will be part of my life for decades. I can't wait for you to arrive. Daddy and your big brothers feel the same way.

missed connections

Yesterday I finished reading Asymmetry, a first novel that garnered considerable attention both for the book and the author's potential.

I liked the book quite a bit but didn't fall head-over-heels for it. It's unstructured and non-narrative but nonetheless compelling and interesting. The author writes beautiful, precise prose and has a sharp eye for detail.

The first part of the book details the friendship and eventual affair between a young woman in her twenties working in an entry level gig at a publishing house and an elderly writer who appears to be in his late seventies. The two characters are fully realized even though their story is somewhat amorphous.

And here is where my insistence on reading almost nothing about a book before consuming it may have done me a disservice. Only after I finished reading the novel did I learn it's a roman à clef: the author had an affair with Philip Roth when he was in his seventies and she was a twentysomething assistant to his literary agent.

Was it better to have not known this before I read the book? I think so. Knowing the author's history might have been a distraction. By reading it the way I did, I judged the book on its face and nothing more.

shirtless abe lincoln

This statute is inside the federal courthouse in Los Angeles. It depicts a shirtless young Abe Lincoln posing like a pouty, insouciant Calvin Klein underwear model.

It was actually sculpted in 1939 by a 22-year-old artist named James Lee Hansen who used himself as a model. So he was the one who developed the pouty, insouciant underwear model look several years before Calvin Klein was even born.

Hansen is still alive and celebrated his 101st birthday last year. I wonder if he still looks like a pouty, insouciant underwear model. I suspect not.

jet-powered hoverboard

This looks like it was faked with CGI, but it's actually real. If you're not afraid of heights like I am, riding around on that thing has to be pretty exhilarating. But I imagine it could be really dangerous if you didn't know what you were doing. His top speed achieved while filming this video was 103 mph.

how does he sneeze?

That thing looks like it nearly blocks both nostrils. How does he deal with ordinary nasal mucus that needs to be cleared out regularly?

It must be a bitch to have to breathe constantly out of your mouth. I guess he has to take the thing in and out of his nose just to blow.

Sneezing must be very painful. The twisted part of me wants to actually witness him sneeze.

art market insanity

I'm sorry, but this is just loony: a painting by an artificial intelligence computer generates "fine art" paintings, one of which recently sold for $432,500.

Essentially, this is a picture created by fancy software and printed by high-quality laser printers.

I'm not impressed by the results, an example of which can be seen below. It looks like something a color printer would produce when the paper got stuck in the rollers.

Sometimes it seems like portions of the art market suffer from periods of tulip mania. This sale definitely seems like a good example to me.

on centillions and googolplexes

After I wrote Monday's entry about discovery of distant 300,000 galaxies possibly containing as many as three quintillion planets, I started to wonder what numbers were called that were even bigger than an octillion, the largest number I knew of.

I fortunately found this handy explainer revealing what really huge numbers were called. Most of them end in "illion" like "vigintillion" and "centillion" but a few do not. The biggest number of all is called a "googolplex."

A googolplex sounds like someone obsessed with checking his name repeatedly on Google and not a massively large number. It's so big, I can't even figure out how big it actually is. But what use would such a massive number be?

luke perry

I was very surprised to hear that the actor Luke Perry died yesterday at age 52. He had suffered a massive stroke a week earlier.

No details were released about why he had such a severe stroke at a relatively early age. He may have had an undiagnosed condition like atrial fibrillation which can cause blood clotting and thus a stroke. Given that sufferers can slip in and out of AFib, it can go undetected even if someone is current on all medical visits.

I can't say I was really familiar with Perry's work but I knew who he was. From everything I read about him, he sounds like he was a very warm, genuine person and not a self-absorbed celebrity.

Still, age 52 is way too young to die in this day and age.

300,000 distant galaxies

A coalition of astronomers is reporting the recent discovery of 300,000 previously unknown galaxies in deep space. This means almost certainly, absent amazing leaps in technology, they will never be visited by humans.

Using the Milky Way as a guide, a typical galaxy has between 200 billion and a trillion stars. If you multiply 300,000 by those numbers, that means those far galaxies could hold between 60 quadrillion and 300 quadrillion stars.

Now considering each star hosts an average of ten planets, not to mention dozens of moons around them, that means this galaxy group might hold as many as three quintillion planets. Sure at least a tiny fraction of those host intelligent life.

But, sadly, those planets will almost always remain at an impossible distance.

baby naming

Even though we named Baby Three months ago, I stumbled upon and read this article with suggestions for how to select one for an impending child. While it's not badly written, it did make me wonder -- do you really need to read articles and books before naming your child?

Baby naming seems like such a personal and also common sense issue that you should just figure it out on your own. And I think it should be a name you've liked a long while, not something you discovered in a list book.

I'm a traditionalist when it comes to names and the husband is, too. I like names that have been around a long while yet remain timeless. If it worked in the eighteenth century or tenth century yet could still work today, then that's a good name to consider.

But if you're naming your child after a character on a TV show or because some celebrity named his or her kid the same thing, then you may be saddling your child with an anvil.

not cruise material

I happened to see something online about "Symphony of the Seas," a new cruise ship that's the largest ever, and it reminded me I have zero desire to ever take a trip on one of those. The thing looks like a giant apartment building perched atop a barge.

The thing holds almost seven thousand passengers plus more than two thousand crew. It's a floating city.

The news in recent years has not lacked for lurid reports of horrible things happening on cruise ships -- flooding, being stranded, food poisoning outbreaks, overflowing sewage, and more.

I know the husband has no desire either to take a cruise as he thinks they're a wimpy way to travel. Being a former navy man who spent a lot of time on real ships, he finds the things laughable.

The only time I would consider a cruise would be if it was on a small ship and traveling to some place inaccessible otherwise, like the arctic or Antarctica.

braxton hicks

During my previous two pregnancies, I started having Braxton Hicks contractions -- so-called false labor contractions -- about a month before my due date. This time, however, I did not. Until yesterday morning.

I was lying in bed half awake at about 5:30 am when the first one came. Although I could tell that it almost certainly was a Braxton Hicks, it nevertheless had me wide awake. Then about an hour later, another one came. Then nothing more since then.

During my next doctor's appointment I will ask why they're later with this baby -- I'm just two weeks from my due date. Maybe it has nothing to do with the baby but with me.

I was in the kitchen with the boys when the second one hit yesterday. After I caught my breath and explained what had happened, both of them were disappointed I didn't deliver a baby there and then on the kitchen floor. Three-year-old Tombo asked why I just didn't "take him out" like he was something warming in the oven. Explanations ensued.

I wonder when they are adults if they will remember my pregnancy. I have to think Joey will, given he's five. Tombo is not quite three so whatever memory he might have will probably be scant at best. My husband was the next to youngest and I was the youngest so neither of us has any point of reference.