biking with vikings

it was 50 years ago today...

worth commemorating: the birth of The Beatles.

mi corazon: the art of printmaking and youtube

our friends alan and elizabeth have posted a youtube video where elizabeth illustrates her print-making process.  the work also shows their love of tango -- pretty cool!  I love the soundtrack they did.  See elizabeth's post here for details.

malcolms fem års fødselsdag fest

since Malcolm's birthday was actually on Sunday, his birthday party was Wednesday. 

 

as always, all the kids come over from the børnehave for the party and sing the danish birthday song at the door when they arrive

it was rainy but fun, with lots of wild play (mostly indoors unfortunately) some music, a nice lunch, more cake and singing of songs and them home

  

  

he'll miss his classmates (esp his teachers Marianne and Flemming and best mate Patrick) - here's a few of them

      

this was the 3rd and last birthday for Malcom here in DK, so bittersweet knowing that we're leaving.  But "what a great party!" he exclaimed when the kids had left.  That's just the way I want him to remember it.

snaps are here.

the scientific integrity editorial cartoon contest

more humor (this of the sad-but-true variety) from the Union of Concerned Scientists regarding political interference in science, an epidemic problem for the Bush Administration

for further reading, see The Republican War on Science.

economic models explained with cows

(this joke has been around the block, but I always laugh when someone sends it to me, so reprinting here)

Economic Models explained with cows - 2007 update.

SOCIALISM
You have 2 cows.
You give one to your neighbour.

COMMUNISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and gives you some milk.

FASCISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and sells you some milk.

NAZISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and shoots you.

BUREAUCRATISM
The State takes both, shoots one,
milks the other, and then throws the milk away...

TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell one and buy a bull.
Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows.
You sell them and retire on the income.

SURREALISM
You have two giraffes.
The government requires you to take harmonica lessons

AN AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows.
Later, you hire a consultant to analyse why the cow has dropped dead.

ENRON VENTURE CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of

credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a
debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all
four
cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows.
The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a

Cayman Island Company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who
sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company.
The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on
one more.
You sell one cow to buy a new president of the United States, leaving
you
with nine cows.
No balance sheet provided with the release.
The public then buys your bull.

THE ANDERSEN MODEL
You have two cows.
You shred them.

A FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike, organise a riot, and block the roads, because you
want three cows.

A JAPANESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and
produce twenty times the milk.
You then create a clever cow cartoon image called 'Cowkimon' and market
it worldwide.

A GERMAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You re-engineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and
milk themselves.

AN ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows, but you don't know
where they are.
You decide to have lunch.

A RUSSIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You count them and learn you have five cows.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
You count them again and learn you have 2 cows.
You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.

A SWISS CORPORATION
You have 5000 cows. None of them belong to you.
You charge the owners for storing them.

A CHINESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You have 300 people milking them.
You claim that you have full employment, and high bovine productivity.
You arrest the newsman who reported the real situation.

AN INDIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You worship them.

A BRITISH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
Both are mad.

AN IRAQI CORPORATION
Everyone thinks you have lots of cows.
You tell them that you have none.
No-one believes you, so they bomb you and invade your
country.
You still have no cows, but at least now you are part of a Democracy....

A NEW ZEALAND CORPORATION
You have two cows.
The one on the left looks very attractive.

AN AUSTRALIAN CORPORATION
You have two
cows.
Business seems pretty good.
You close the office and go for a few beers to celebrate.

Happy Birthday Malcolm!

 

Malcom is 5 years old today... congratulations my boy!  Every Danish child has this song for their birthday

I dag er det Malcolms fødselsdag!  (today is Malcolm's birthday)
Hurra! Hurra! Hurra!
Han sikkert sig en gave får             (he's sure he'll find a gift)
som han har ønsket sig i år            (that is something he's wished for this year)
og dejlig chokolade med kage til.   (and delicious chocolate and cake)

Hvor smiler han, hvor er han glad   (how he smiles and is happy)
Hurra! Hurra! Hurra!
Men denne dag er også rar,            (but his day is also nice)
for hjemme venter mor og far       (for mother and father are waiting at home)
med dejlig chokolade med kage til.  (with delicious chocolate and cake)

Og når han hjem fra skolen går,       (and now he walks home from school)
Hurra! Hurra! Hurra!
Så skal han hjem og holde fest,       (he plans to go home to a party)
og hvem der kommer med som gæst,  (and those who come with him are guests)
får dejlig chokolade med kage til.    (finding delicious chocolate and cake)

Til slut vi råber højt i kor.                 (until at last we shout loudly in chorus)
Hurra! Hurra! Hurra!
Gid Malcolm længe leve må               (and wish Malcolm a long life)
og sine ønsker opfyldt få -                (and may he find his wishes fulfilled)
og dejlig chokolade med kage til.

The theme this year is 'Romans and Dinosuars', both of which have been caught in the La Brea chocolate cake that Susan made.  Wednesday the school kids come over for his birthday party, today was just the three of us.

 

The Playmobil Romans are a big hit.. we had our first battle this morning (Malcolm's land-based legions with catapaults and spears won over my galleon) plus a swordfight outside with his toy roman soldier armor.  I even learned something new: the SPQR on his roman galleon apparently stands for Senatus Populusque Romanus ("The Senate and the Roman People"), referring to the government of the ancient Roman Republic.

Malcolm has had a good year.  He's changed a lot from four to five.  We definitely feel that he is ready for kindergarten and more stimulus now.

Here are his fifth birthday stats:

Your sex is male

Your height is 0 ft. 46 in., or 116 cm.

Your weight is 47 lbs., or 21 kg.

Your birthdate is 06/24/2002, so your age is 5 years 0 months.

Your height is 92th percentile

That means you are 92th in height compared to 100 kids your age and sex.

Your weight is 86th percentile

That means you are 86th in weight compared to 100 kids your age and sex.

Your Body Mass Index is 16.1, which is the 69th percentile

That means that your BMI is 69th compared to 100 kids your age and sex.

You are neither underweight nor overweight according to health experts*.  Your weight is in the healthy range for your height and age.

The healthy weight range for your height and age is 41 to 50 pounds (18 to 23 kilograms).  This range corresponds to a BMI between the 5th and 85th percentiles for your age and sex.

For comparision here are some earlier birthday photos:

2006

2005

2003

mon-te-ssori's a-flyin' circussss....

yesterday was the annual "put on a show for the parents!" at Malcolm's Montessori Børnehave... this year's theme was Cirkus Montessori

  

it was great. The kids -- all bedecked in costumes and facepaint -- put on a fun show including 'high wire' (a board for balance beam), 'dog & pony' with Fleming their teacher as ringmaster, a strong man, synchronized bicycling, a snake charmer (including a 'tusind bener fra andalusia'... an andalusian centipede) and more!

   

it was a nice 'swang song' for Malcolm, who is now wrapping up his time at Birkerød Montessori.  He's had a great 2.5 or so years there (his first day was February 1, 2005) with Marianne and Flemming who run the school. 

He's learned to socialize, to play and take turns in an orderly way and he's become fluent in a second language... all good things.  I'm pretty sure he will miss his børnehave but he should always have nice memories of his time there.

All 'circus snaps' are here.

you're coming up roses, everywhere you go...

(w/apologies to the late, great Elliott Smith for nicking his title)

lots of beautiful roses in our neighborhood this time of year.

it was 30 degrees here when I was in Seattle... very unusual.  Susan got a kiddie pool for Malcolm who spent the warm days in and out of the pool running around naked as little kids do here when it is warm.  The warm weather was followed by rain so the plants & trees have exploded with growth: our garden is a lush jungle and we're in one of the cycles of humid days w/rain then humid again... 'close' as the English would say.

But this is Thomas Mann's 'mist-shrouded North' , after all, and it is grey and clammy not very hot at all.  We're nearing the summer solstice now so at this latitude (55 degrees) it is light virtually all the time: It gets dark-ish after midnight and it is twilight again by 3-4 am.  The birds are going absolutely mad outside... they've set up nests underneath the clay tiles in our roof (as they do every year) and they're singing like homeward drunks by 4 am.  The din was such the past few nights that I thought someone had left a radio on outside, all the different birdsongs mashing together into a cacauphony of whistles and tones, with the fledgelings under the roof all screetching to be fed.

Especially at this time of year, with all the migrant birds returned, there are more birds here than any place I've ever lived.  I think it is because the suburban towns with their hedgerows and mature deciduous trees provide lots of food and shelter plus abundant supplies of food in summer... more than the evergreens of the Pacific Northwest can provide for most birds.

happy father's day

and as it is father's day, a quick post on my dad

 

my dad is a interesting guy: very generous with his time (and sometimes a little too generous with money),  a bit cantankerous at times (as you'd expect from a now-70 year-old New Yorker) but still energetic enough to single-handedly design and build a barn by himself... he just finished this one in Texas for my Aunt Mary and her husband

he built a garage for us at our first Seattle home in Capitol Hill and he's planning a retirement cottage to build next year (for the 'off season' when they have to leave Nova Scotia for the obligatory six months).  Whew.  Most 35 year-olds I know couldn't keep up with him.

He also drafted the initial design for the house we're building in Green Lake: A good, simple design that fit the lot and our needs and made the construction easier for the builders.

He's been doing this for a long, long time.  My brothers and I have strong memories of the weekends (3 years' worth!) we spent helping with the house he built in Westchester Country (north of NYC) back in the '70s, only to sell it at the end when the bottom fell out of the engineering job market.  We bitched and moaned the whole time, but we learned a lot.  He does it because he loves it (he calls it his 'art').

There's a lot more I could say about my dad:  The intellectual (and argumentative) imprint he got from his parents (and passed on to us, alas :)), his selflessness and honesty, some of the more quotable lines ("all manners are bullshit" was one of my favorites) but this is just a father's day blog post, not an obituary, not by a long shot.  So I'll just leave it at this: we are lucky to have such a great father (nay, great parents: that goes for you too, mum).

Happy Father's Day, Pops.

And a moment of thanks for Donald, Susan's dad, as well.  He passed away a few years ago.

I don't think I've ever met a nicer-natured guy.  There's a lot of him in Malcolm.  Of course, the nastier bits are all down to me.

how children lost the right to roam

from the Daily Mail (a rather pointless rag otherwise) comes this brief, interesting article on a topic near to my heart:  Children no longer have any freedom to roam unsupervised and they don't walk anywhere:

When George Thomas was eight he walked everywhere.

It was 1926 and his parents were unable to afford the fare for a tram, let alone the cost of a bike and he regularly walked six miles to his favourite fishing haunt without adult supervision.

Fast forward to 2007 and Mr Thomas's eight-year-old great-grandson Edward enjoys none of that freedom.

He is driven the few minutes to school, is taken by car to a safe place to ride his bike and can roam no more than 300 yards from home.

Even if he wanted to play outdoors, none of his friends strays from their home or garden unsupervised.

The contrast between Edward and George's childhoods is highlighted in a report which warns that the mental health of 21st-century children is at risk because they are missing out on the exposure to the natural world enjoyed by past generations.

The report says the change in attitudes is reflected in four generations of the Thomas family in Sheffield.

The oldest member, George, was allowed to roam for six miles from home unaccompanied when he was eight.

His home was tiny and crowded and he spent most of his time outside, playing games and making dens.

Mr Thomas, who went on to become a carpenter, has never lost some of the habits picked up as a child and, aged 88, is still a keen walker.

His son-in-law, Jack Hattersley, 63, was also given freedom to roam.

He was aged eight in 1950, and was allowed to walk for about one mile on his own to the local woods. Again, he walked to school and never travelled by car.

By 1979, when his daughter Vicky Grant was eight, there were signs that children's independence was being eroded.

"I was able to go out quite freely - I'd ride my bike around the estate, play with friends in the park and walk to the swimming pool and to school," said Mrs Grant, 36.

"There was a lot less traffic then - and families had only one car. People didn't make all these short journeys."

Today, her son Edward spends little time on his own outside his garden in their quiet suburban street. She takes him by car to school to ensure she gets to her part-time job as a medical librarian on time.

While he enjoys piano lessons, cubs, skiing lessons, regular holidays and the trampoline, slide and climbing frame in the garden, his mother is concerned he may be missing out.

She said: "He can go out in the crescent but he doesn't tend to go out because the other children don't. We put a bike in the car and go off to the country where we can all cycle together.

"It's not just about time. Traffic is an important consideration, as is the fear of abduction, but I'm not sure whether that's real or perceived."

She added: "Over four generations our family is poles apart in terms of affluence. But I'm not sure our lives are any richer."

The report's author, Dr William Bird, the health adviser to Natural England and the organiser of a conference on nature and health on Monday, believes children's long-term mental health is at risk.

He has compiled evidence that people are healthier and better adjusted if they get out into the countryside, parks or gardens.

Stress levels fall within minutes of seeing green spaces, he says. Even filling a home with flowers and plants can improve concentration and lower stress.

"If children haven't had contact with nature, they never develop a relationship with natural environment and they are unable to use it to cope with stress," he said.

"Studies have shown that people deprived of contact with nature were at greater risk of depression and anxiety. Children are getting less and less unsupervised time in the natural environment.

"They need time playing in the countryside, in parks and in gardens where they can explore, dig up the ground and build dens."

The report, published by Natural England and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, also found that children's behaviour and school work improve if their playground has grassy areas, ponds and trees.

It also found evidence that hospital patients need fewer painkillers after surgery if they have views of nature from their bed.

Another fascinating thing about this article was the graphic that accompanied it; since generations of this family occupied the same area, you can graphically see how tragically fettered the current generation of children are when compared to their forebears

We've thought a lot on this subject.  Here in Denmark, kids have a great degree of freedom to roam unsupervised from a young age.  You often see quite young kids out on their own cycling and walking.  And when I was very young I'd go off exploring the neighborhood, looking through backyards and nearby woods and the like.

I think here in Denmark kids have a greater degree of freedom because  it is very safe for them to do so, at least, that is the perception.  In the US and England, the perception rightly or no is that it is clearly unsafe.

We thought about this issue before we decided on a place to live when we return to Seattle in August.  While I don't think we can let Malcolm run around unsupervised -- it is an American city after all, albeit a safe one -- we chose a place where lots of walking will be part of our daily lives, and where he is close to nature even though it is an urban neighborhood.   The 'Map of Walkable King County' from the Sightline Institute shows our north-side neighborhood e. side of Green Lake as one of the few in red i.e. 'high walkability'

I hope our son feels some degree of freedom as a result, even if he doesn't have the unfettered freedom that I had as a child.