The Flooring is finally done!

Bamboo planks for the bulk of the room. and Slate by the entrance We had originally been going to put cork flooring where the bamboo now is. My wife and I were in Home Depot and saw the bamboo, which was very attractive and quite inexpensive--about half the cost of cork. The instructions, which were with the display, pushed the use of polyurethane glue. The 60 lb buckets of glue were right there, so we picked one up along with the wood. Just to play it safe, we also got a box of 2" finishing nails. When I opened up the planks I saw that the instructions called for glue OR nails. Well, I had both, so I used both. The glue was very messy and is (barely) soluable in denatured alcohol, but does not dissolve in water, oil, paint thinner or acetone. The only solvent I have, but didn't try, is gasoline. I guess I will be wearing glue on my hands for a week or so. The bamboo is a very hard material and splits easily. I predrilled each of the nails that I put in. This floor is going nowhere. dbp

Standard Pot Roast using 7-bone Chuck Roast.

In a large dutch oven, brown the meat in a tablespoon of olive oil. If the roast is too big to lay flat, then cut it into pieces and brown them one at a time. Set aside the meat once browned. Peel one medium potato per serving and slice it length-wise. Place the potatoes in the dutch oven so that the rounded side is facing down. Place the meat on top of the potatoes and arrange it so that, as far as you can, it is in a single layer. Bake, covered in a 350F oven. Around 1 & ½ hours before serving add the rest of the vegetables and spices: • Put fresh black pepper on the meat, as well as salt, crushed garlic and crushed red peppers(if desired)and bay leaves. • Place onion halves, flat-side-down on top of seasoned meat. • Put carrots and parsnips in. They should be cut into 2-3 inch length and halved if they are thicker than the diameter of a quarter. Recover the dutch oven and return to the oven for around 1 & ½ hours or until the onions are done. When you add the vegetables, you may also add mushrooms, whole if small or halved if large. Bell pepper, in large chunks is an option some like. Some folks insist on adding tomatoes—this is fine, but you may want to blanch them and pull the skin off first, or use a can of whole stewed tomatoes. The roast should let out plenty of liquid, but add some water, wine or beer if it looks too dry on the bottom of the pan.

Travel Documents...

Observent viewers may have noticed that various official looking documents were posted here a couple of weeks ago. Here is why. I had to travel to Canada (which I have done probably a dozen times) and it never occured to me to bring any kind of proof of citizenship. I had my wife fedex the documents to me in Vancouver, but just in case they didn't make it on time, I had her post the documents to this blog. A week after I returned, sure enough, my passport finaly came to me in the mail. dbp

Travel Update...and the unspoken comment.

Outside of the passenger screening area there was a woman with a pet carrier and a few other bags. I overheard her asking an official if her carry-on needed to be checked. My unspoken comment: If it is still alive, then it isn't carrion. My wife and I totally get, and like this kind of humor. It is the knowledge of how idosyncratic we are that made me hold my tongue. dbp

Waiting on Hertz...

I am here in Lynnwood WA with my nephew waiting for Hertz to come to my rescue. We had to jump-start the rental since it is so cold here, but when I went to scrape the windows, the car locked itself when I shut the door. What kind of car does that? Hertz said it was a "Safety" feature. Okay, seems to me more like an inconvenience feature. They say they will be here in 20-30 minutes. It is 9:12 now. The clock is ticking...

Random Bumper Sticker...

I know that making fun of bumper stickers is mostly a little too easy, but I can't resist doing it at least once. I should note that this is not the first time I have seen this sticker, it is just that it stimulated the following chain of thought.

WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER!

First thought: This is probably a left-over from the run-up to the Iraq war, or possibly Afghanistan or maybe even the prospect of one with Iran.

Second thought: If war is not the answer, then this implies that there is a question out there which has an answer, but that answer is something other than war. What if the question is, what do we call an armed conflict between two nation states? War may not be the only correct answer, but it is certainly a member of the correct answer set.

Third thought: In any situation, one could rule-out one course of action without suggesting any alternatives and end up being able to defend any outcome.

Let us use the Iran scenario: If we do not go to war then whatever does happen can be explained-away as: "Well, war would have resulted in an even worse disaster, or the non-war option taken was not the correct non-war option. That is to say, "The crater located where Tel Aviv once was could have been averted in some other way than by warfare." The answer is even more simple if we do go to war: "It could have been solved peacefully". I am always suspicious of folks who play such games.

The fact of the matter is that any country which spends money on having a military must implicitly believe that war is indeed the answer, sometimes.

dbp

Random statement by Jemma as she sips her hot cocoa

"Mermaids love salt. I am a scientist of mermaids. I know everything about mermaids."

Our Christmas day picture

We still haven't sent out our Christmas cards yet. My 'explaination' is that this is a true Christmas picture--actually taken on Christmas day--so it is really physically impossible to have them out early. dbp

Surenna tries on her new Aunt Kerry hat...

Surenna and her sisters all love their new hats plus matching silk purses.

Dahlia's new hat...

Dahlia tries on her new hat. She loves it and the snugness around the opening nicely accentuates her big roung head.

dbp

Jemma's new hat

Here is Jemma enjoying her new Aunt Kerry hat.

Lets see how this 'add image' button works...

Well, this seems just as easy as using Picassa! If the quality is good I will just post pictures this way instead.

dbp

Update: The quality looks okay (the original image was slightly out of focus)

Here are the girls modeling their new hats and purses.

This is what I get for being nice.

It had been a while since posting anything, so I thought, "why not post some Christmas pictures"? When I went into Blogger it asked me to upgrade and so I did. Then I launched Picassa, and it too asked me to upgrade. Now, of course, I cannot post pictures. Nice! dbp

The girls all dressed-up for divali function. 

The new room just before drywall application. 

Why We Believe...Or Not.

A few days ago I was listening to author and professor of philosophy Daniel C. Dennett on WBUR. He was talking about his new book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. His thesis seemed to be that we can fully explain why people from all cultures form religions. The explanation is that there are natural (biological) reasons why this happens—it is not due to supernatural happenings. I haven't read the book and this is not a book review. What Dennett indicated on the radio show, is that since there are natural reasons which can explain the emergence of religion, it is therefore not rational to continue to believe in the supernatural content of religions. There is a certain logic to this: If you already have a complete explanation for a phenomenon, then there is no logical need to seek further reasons. What Dennett overlooks is a piece of circular, but nonetheless persuasive reasoning. If there is to be a coherent religion, it would assume there is a God and that he wants to be known. So, if there is a God and he made the universe and he wants us to worship him well...wouldn't it follow that he would design things in such a way as to make this possible? His creation would have to contain, at a minimum, creatures who are able to conceive of God. But that is really not enough. Just because his creatures are able to think of God doesn't give them any reason to actually do so. He could either come down and manifest himself to them every so often or he could make his people such that they have an internal need for religion. I happen to think that the latter is the better solution. Much like planetary mechanics via Newtonian physics is more elegant than earlier solutions which called for constant divine intervention. To look at it in a different light: If there is a God and he wants to be worshiped, wouldn't it be odd to make creatures who have no need or interest in religion? To put it into a natural selection perspective: If there were a selective disadvantage to religion, then religion would have been bred-out of humanity. A God who wants to be worshiped would make a world such that religion conveys some kind of benefit to his people; this way, they would never out-grow it. On a more respectful note, I don't think that any God worthy of worship would want it for the sake of his own ego. It would have to be for the good of his people. There may be something fundamental about sentient creatures (such as those found in mankind) that we need the divine (or the idea of the divine) in order to lead lives in which we find meaning.

2003--The first time I had been to Story Land. Dahlia was only 3 and it was a real accomplishment just to get her to go on the ride. If you examine the expression on her face, it is clear that she expects to die...right away. 

This year we went to Story Land over the 4th of July weekend. We all went on the Bamboo Shoots ride, but this was the only time the picture came out. You can see that Surenna is scared by how she is clutching my knee, but mostly she is thrilled.

Haven't posted much...

I haven't posted much here, so I will use comments I have made on other sites for filler... For some backstory...I had made a short (critical) comment on Oscar's site about a post he made about an impeachment teach-in he had attended. Ann piled-on with another comment--she wanted more juicy details and also thought the idea of impeachment was idiotic too. Well Oscar eventually came back with a long post defending the idea. It was probably mostly Ann who goaded Oscar into such a long response, though he mostly addressed my concerns rather than hers. I felt that since he had gone to such efforts, I should make a long riposte. So here it is: Here is the link... to Oscar's first post and here is the response post. Hi Oscar, I hope it was Ann rather than me who was mostly responsible for you taking such an effort on this post. You put a lot of work into it and so it deserves some kind of response: 1. I don’t want to split hairs on impeachment v. being removed from office: I am well aware of the difference,-when one speaks of impeachment it is usually assumed that the end goal is removal from office. As an aside, I won a bet back during impeachment days on this very distinction. If the purpose is not to remove Bush from office, why not just pursue a resolution (in either chamber of Congress) of censure? It has twice the chance of passing since you have two chambers to work with, while impeachment must originate in the House only. 2. I never brought up the possibility of a back-lash because, while I suspect there would be one, it is hard to have much assurance one way or the other. The Republicans did loose 4 Senate and 2 House seats in the election of 2000, so it would be hard to say that they gained from impeachment. The argument should be whether Republicans were hurt and if so, by how much. 3. We can debate on the chances of such a project being successful: Impeachment itself would be one degree of success and removal from office a much higher level of success. I am not a Democrat, so maybe I just cannot relate, but I don’t see most liberals liking Cheney better than Bush. I will grant though that it might end up with a Ford-like situation, where the President was too weak to do much against an energized opposition in Congress. 4. I think you will agree (or maybe not) that a minimum requirement for success in this impeachment project is, at least a Democratic majority in the House. If the Republicans retain control, why would they give the opposition an impeachment proceeding to play with? Further, the Republicans would not have to defend an unpopular president. The burden of proof is on the accusers: All the Republicans have to do is rebut any accusations the Democrats make. 5. I see a lot of “Bush lied…etc” when I wander through liberal sites. In most cases it is all about the WMD, which were highly pushed in the lead-up to war and turned-out to be not-so-abundant. For Bush to be a liar, he would have to have known that there were no, or very few WMD there. How do you propose he would know this while the CIA and every foreign intelligence service thought that Iraq retained WMD stocks? On a similar vein, if Bush was so power-mad why would he have kept the lid on the actual poison shells that have been found in the last two years in Iraq? A real demagogue would have trumped each find, instead he kept it quiet to prevent insurgents from seeing if they could find some to use on our forces.I won’t re-fight the Clinton impeachment here—I followed it closely at the time and have no urge to dredge-up all of that again. I made the bet that Clinton would be impeached a couple of days after he was re-elected. I thought it would be due to abuse of executive privilege claims, or recess appointments of officers already rejected (voted down) by the Senate or maybe Chinese spy issues etc. I think the Lewinski affair would certainly have sunk a Republican president, but probably saved Clinton’s since it lured the Republicans into pursuing weaker (but easier to prove) charges. The impeachment never had anything to do with disagreeing with Clinton: The only major things that got done then: Welfare reform and NAFTA were ideas that Republicans liked. The things Republicans didn’t want; BTU taxes, national healthcare etc never got anywhere anyway. Jeeze Oscar! You goaded me into posting the longest comment I have ever made, so we’re even. Best regards, dbp

A Novel Idea

This idea for a story hit me just a couple of weeks ago. Given the topic, it should have occurred to me around 4 years ago due to the unusual circumstances of my 3rd daughter’s birth. Anyway the idea: A woman is pregnant, not just pregnant but due in a week or two. Normally a woman in this condition will not travel, least of all fly, but this one has little choice. She has received word that her father (or it could be her mother or anyone really close to her) is on their deathbed in a distant city. I was thinking of the woman living in Seattle and her dad living in New York. So, she goes off to NYC and sees her dad before he dies—it is all emotional and there is plenty of room for flashbacks and back story in general etc. On the flight home she delivers the baby on the plane. There is a retired obstetrician on the plane who is glad to help and it is this woman’s 2nd or third child so everything goes smoothly. There could even be a side story on how this delivery effects the doctor, makes him change his views, reevaluate what he is doing with the rest of his life etc. Or even, since he is on a flight to Seattle too, it is because he is also on his way home and the mother and he become friends or confide in one another etc. The key point here is the location of the birth: We found out from when our daughter was born at home that the hospital (in another town) could not issue a birth certificate. It had to come from our own town—which does not have any hospitals. It turns out that accidental births at home happen a couple of times per year, so our town officials had no problems issuing a birth certificate for us. What about a kid born while whizzing over the countryside at 500 mph? Luckily, the real doctor, a professional to the end, wrote down the time of birth on a pad. That and computerized navigation made it easy to ascertain just what county in Nebraska they were over when the baby was born. Here is where events sort of propel themselves: The mom writes to the county seat asking for a birth certificate and so, after a few certified and notarized letters are exchanged, she gets a birth certificate for her new born son. (Maybe the son is named after the recently departed grandfather. The daughter can honor her dad with an easy spirit now that he won’t be around to gloat and make her regret the decision.) The local paper for this Nebraska county seat regularly checks with the town officials for any matters which could go into their announcements section—births within the county always qualify. A reader brings this happening to the attention of her ladies club and they decide to, as a gift, send a permanent subscription of the local weekly paper to the mom who had her son in the air over their county. The boy grows up knowing this story and seeing the local paper laying around his home. Maybe he decides to go to Nebraska for college. Things could take any turn then: He could meet a girl in college or end up founding a business while in college etc. Something which ties him to the area would happen and he would end up living there. I think a story could be made out of it. I have certainly read stories hung on less plot than that. dbp