Lord of the Flies

The neighbors have their 7 grandkids, all under 10 years, out on the back porch right now, dressed in their Sunday best, riding tricycles, and jumping around with sticks. And screaming. It sounds like some kind of mass infanticide going on out there. I ran outside to see what was going on. I believe demons are trying to escape their little bodies through their lungs. My dog is freaking out a bit too. This must be what it sounds like when kids actually play outside.

Oh Bwoonhilda, You're So Wuvwee...

Yes, I know it. I can't help it.

(This is one of my very favwits! I even cwied on the part where the bunny wabbit dies beneath the weeping wose.)



Bugs Bunny is a very special classification of rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus transvetitus), rarely seen these days. In the past they could often be spotted on Saturday mornings, as children sat in front of glowing television sets with actual dials on them, getting exposed in an entertaining and amusing way to opera and classical music.

A....C.....uh.....Phlegm......

This is probably old, but it's new to me. Hilarious.

Hey! Maybe I Can Teach it Then.

Unfortunately, my blog is not Genius level, must have been all the moronic posts about my weird dreams.

He Should Fit Right In.

This here is Ragweed. He's a golden tan, so he matches my decor like my other pets. As well as being a pet, he is a scientific experiment involving nutrition, behavior, and cognitive function. He also likes spinning things and banging into walls.

Common Ancestor

Is there anyone out there who thinks the whole different breeds/one common ancestor thing is unbelievable? Is there any other animal we have bred over the years that has such dramatic variety? These are the Guinness book record holders.

Robotic Helper And A Bunch of Rambling Stuff About Asperger's

While I was reading this article, I was thinking how good this robot would be for helping autistic children learn to interact, then the idea was proposed at the end. Apparently, that's what this technology is most likely to be used for.



It would be very nice to be able to use a robot to teach your child how to interact outside of a social setting. When Josie was younger and having a lot more trouble with aggression and empathy, I sure hated the idea of using other people's children to teach her how to interact. The only problem with the robot is that it has no facial expressions. That would make him extra scary to me, but probably more helpful to the autistic community.

Josie has come a long way in this area, especially towards younger children. She has a good instinct about them, and takes very good care and is protective of little ones. They like her too. She doesn't talk down to them. She tried to teach a three year old how to play chess the other night. She didn't expect Lola to know how to play, and just rolled with whatever Lola wanted to do.

Older kids are harder to read. They may be smiling at you when they are bullying you and she thinks they are being nice. Or they won't tell you when they are angry. She can't read that either. Toddlers cry when they are sad, laugh when they are happy, throw a tantrum when they are angry. Josie gets that and has a great amount of confidence with babies and small kids.

Older kids often can't pick out what is not normal about Josie. She works very hard to entertain others, and usually just comes off as a very silly girl. But they do think there's something a bit "off" there. Little ones just take her as she is. Many homeschooled kids are better at taking her at face value too. But as she gets older, that kind of acceptance by her peers happens less and less.

It's appropriate that this robot is a toddler, how do you program a robot to be sarcastic? How do you program a robot to lie to your face? What does a lying face look like? How do we know when someone is doing that?

I'm a neurotypical person, but I can't readily explain how I know the hidden language. It comes naturally to me. That's what makes me neurotypical. Teaching this hidden social curriculum the difficulty in raising a child with Asperger's syndrome. It's like teaching someone how to build a strong house with popsicle sticks and paperclips. You need to become a totally new kind of draftsman to find out how to make it happen with what you've been given.

I wonder how many neurotypical people who understand the hidden language are out there programming robots? These engineering fields seem to be highly populated with aspies. But perhaps it takes a more scientific knowledge of human behavior to program a robot to emulate a human personality, precisely the kind of textbook style knowledge people with asperger's syndrome need to use daily in dealing with social situations.

Mighty Mice

Monday morning, my daughter and her friend are going out to buy two mice in order to run an experiment studying the effects of nutrition on concentration and behavior. I'll blog it as interesting things will surely develop. They will be entering their experiment in the local homeschooler's science fair.

They have already picked out their names: Poppy, and Lucky Sue. She's lucky because she's a feeder mouse who has been saved from being a snake's lunch.

Here's an interesting little article I read today about super mice. Oh no, they're not interested in using this technology in humans;) I imagine the military will get their hands on this one. Perhaps even the NFL.

Cockaboody!

Moonbird

I remember this cartoon from when I was little. It sounds as if someone just recorded children playing, then animated it. Been searching for it for a while. I've been Googling among other things "that ain't bait that's candy". I found it.

Smoking a Bit of the Pol Pot in Delaware

Apparently at the University of Delaware, you get shot in the back for stealing a handful of rice.
Well, not really, but it sounds so Khmer Rouge.

Some excerpts:

With no guile at all the university has laid out a brutally specific program for "treatment" of incorrect attitudes of the 7,000 students in its residence halls.

The training makes clear that white people are to be considered racists - at least those who have not yet undergone training and confessed their racism. The RAs have been taught that a "racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture, or sexuality."

Students are required to attend training sessions, floor meetings and one-on-one sessions where RAs ask personal questions such as "When did you discover your sexual identity?". Students are pressured or required to accept an array of the university's approved views. In one training session, students had to announce their opinions on gay marriage. Those who did not approve of gay marriage were isolated and heavily pressured to change their opinion.

In this curricular approach, students are required to report their thoughts and opinions. One professor says: "You have to confess what you believe to the RA." The RAs write reports to their superiors on student progress in cooperating with the "treatment."

You can read the whole thing here.

Via a link from Instapundit.

To Will Smith...

Dear Will,

First of all, let me say that I thought we had a good time. I especially enjoyed our conversation about the 70's R&B sound and how it should come back. I know I probably shouldn't have said what I said about rap. I was what propelled you to fame after all. But you were never gangsta, so I figured you knew what I meant.

I never expected things to end up in the bedroom. I do believe it was me who was showing you the door, when suddenly a good night kiss turned into something else.

But when my entire family came home and decided to walk through the room one by one, how can you blame me for that? They weren't even my family, just supporting actors. I did feel like I needed to go to the living room and let them know to mind their own business.

Then you came out and stood in the kitchen with your back turned to us and those ear muffs on and you were all of the sudden weary and dismissive. You turned to me with that endearing Will Smith smile and cut me to the bone. That thing you said about me being a flatterer, and about the hibachi you made and how nobody loves every single bite. First of all, I'm not a flatterer, and I think fame is sort of a mass hysterical people worship. Second of all, I don't really like hibachi all that much. Thirdly, you didn't even make me hibachi! What the hell are you talking about?

Things just got strange when you left. Standing there in the living room with Mimi Rogers, Peter McNichol, and Steve my old college roommate looking at the door, then looking at me. Then Oliver from the Brady Bunch reminded me that you still had my hearing protection on. I'll need those for Ladies Night at Coal Creek next Tuesday.

Anyway, I'm sorry it all ended up the way it did, but c'est la vie, I guess. Oh, and I'm married. You are too.

Best Regards,

Michele

P. S. I would like to know the name of that musician you were talking about earlier in the evening. I wrote it down, but somewhere between then and waking up I lost the piece of paper. So if you could do me the kindness of letting me know tonight, that would be great. It would save me a whole day of surfing Itunes. If you're still throwing a tantrum, well nevermind.

Happy Halloween!

This is an old one of my hubby on his favorite day of the year. Check out the phone. I'm sure he's calling in dead to work.


Josie made these little guys. I think they're telling people stories around the campfire. Gather 'round kiddies and I'll tell you some stories about the mysterious third dimension.

This is not kid safe, so shoo them out of the room and prepare to laugh so uncontrollably you are rendered incapable of speech, or possibly even bladder control. Check out The 30 Most Unsettling German Halloween Costumes over at Cracked Magazine.


(It wasn't obvious to me how to go to the next page on that site. There is a series of little grey buttons at the bottom of the post. One of them is a next arrow.)

Bad Bad Putty Tat!

Indoctrinate U

After the lengthy excerpt below (which you're allowed to skip, I'm not watching) is a deleted scene from Evan Coyne Maloney's Indoctrinate U which covers free speech issues on college campuses. I saw a good deal of this film while it was still called Brainwashing 101, and it was on his website. The film is provocative, but the delivery of the message is lighthearted. He's a fair and polite libertarian guy, and I appreciate the way he interviews people and approaches the issue of diversity of thought on college campuses.

Here's an example of that fairness in his discussion of "groupthink" with Newsbusters. (Boldface mine.)

NewsBusters: Yeah, I think that's right. As far as some of these problems go, in the film you talk about that you think that if conservatives had control of academia that we would see similar instances, almost as common of liberals being, having their speech trampled on. Expand on that.

MALONEY: Yeah I think that's probably true, I mean I don't have any way of testing the theory but my theory is basically this: that it's not necessarily just ideology that causes people to do some of the things that the campus left is doing to suppress dissent today. I think that part of the problem, unfortunately is a natural human tendency towards group-think. We've seen plenty of examples throughout history of group-think and I think we've seen enough examples that you can't say that group-think is limited to one point in the ideological spectrum.

So I think yeah, I don't know what the exact numbers would have to be for the same problem to exist in reverse, but I'm sure that if there were the number of conservatives on campus equal to the amount of liberals that there are today-so in other words, if the roles were exactly mirror of what they are now-if conservatives were in the vast majority, I don't have particularly good faith that things would be much better. I think the problem is group-think that the size of the group, as it becomes more and more ideologically uniform, I think that's what ultimately results in the problem.

So yeah, I think that's why it's important to respect free speech in the abstract because, just because you might be calling the shots on campus today doesn't mean that you will be tomorrow. And if you create an environment that doesn't respect speech, well it's not going to be very good for you if that environment exists when other people are running the campus. So I think it's important purely for selfish reasons to support free speech and free thought on campus in the abstract and not have it be an ideological battle. There is nothing inherently ideological about free thought. Everybody should be actively engaged in it.

I remember back when in the Brainwashing 101 days he did a good bit of filming at the University of Tennessee. I would really like to see this documentary come to Knoxville. In order to get a screening he has to get enough signatures from your city. The Sikh student in the trailer below, Sukhmani Singh Khalsa, (in the turban obviously) is from UT.

Dora

I wonder if Mad TV has done a spoof on Dora the Explorer. I mean what kind of idiot can't solve her dilemmas. I can like solve them so freakin' fast. Jake said it right. "Dora's for idiots." And she's so freakin' loud and demanding. "Say Backpack! Say Backpack!" Well what are you going to do about it if I don't?! I want to just kick her butt. And I don't even need a map!

Alec Baldwin agrees with me.

Meow. Meow. Meow.

My kitty is spoiled. He meows a lot. His bowl never empty. Most of the time he just wants us to get up and walk down to the bottom floor and show him to his bowl. "Here my precious and most Honorable High Puttie Tat, here's your food, see?" Then he eats it while laying down. I'll have to get a picture of it.

Remember this Little Guy?

What's worse than going into your daughter's room and finding a diving beetle? Cleaning up your daughter's room and finding the jar with his badly decomposed carcass floating around. You know that little dance you do when something icky crawls over your foot in the middle of the night. My dance comes with a noise too. I'm doing all of that.

Peaceful Protest III

Of course these anti-globalization thugs have never been very peaceful, or rational. So they've hurled a brick at an Abercrombie and Fitch salesgirl. Now, I've certainly met a few smart ass little sales girls that I've wanted to thwack with a blunt object, but I don't think it would solve the world's inequalities, and I'm a nice person.








You know it could be a disgruntled customer hiding amongst the protesters. She probably got that look from the sales girl. You know the one that says "Yeah, those jeans would look nice if they weren't cutting your fat ass in half. Maybe they have something for you at Kmart." Now that's worth hurling a brick over.

Yes, I do fantasize a fair bit.

From Instapundit again.

Maybe the Little Captain Isn't So Absurd

We're watching "Say Anything". John Cusack and Ione Skye just broke up. She's crying in the car.
Jake says, "When I grow up, I'll never break up with anybody."

I said, "Well, you'll need to. Sometimes it hurts, but you have to look around before you find someone you want to stay with. I broke up with a few boys before I met your dad."

Then he looked across the table and said "They have to speak to your heart."

"Yes they do."