Halle Berry is at least 50 percent white, the girl’s father is white . . . do the math on how white the girl is supposed to look. Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Parents
I’m in Semi-Solidarity with the Protestors
I support the UC Berkeley students protesting tuition hikes but maybe with a little less conviction than I used to because my kid is a senior and no matter how high tuition goes I won’t be paying it anymore so I hope the boy was in class yesterday and not out causing a disturbance . . . Read more →
National Scholarship Award
It would be nice if modesty prevented me from mentioning that my kid’s fraternity, the Alpha Tau Omega (ATO) chapter at UC Berkeley, was awarded the National Scholarship Award at the ATO National Congress for having the highest GPA of any ATO chapter in the nation. “Yeah, and we actually have hard classes,” he said. Read more →
More People I’m Sick Unto Death Of: Breastfeeding Celebrities
“In paths untrodden,” as Walt Whitman marvelously put it. “Escaped from the life that exhibits itself . . .” Oh, that’s a plague, the life that exhibits itself, a real plague! — Saul Bellow, Herzog Who the heck is Olivia Wilde and why is there a photo all over the Internet of her breastfeeding an infant in a restaurant booth? I mean, not a surreptitious candid photo of her discreetly breastfeeding. A posed photo! In a designer dress! (I’m not posting or linking to the photo. If you haven’t already seen it, I’m sure you can find it.) Well it’s a natural function, breastfeeding — right? Yeah, but there are a number of natural functions that need not be performed in public and photographed. The life that exhibits itself . . . what a plague indeed. Read more →
Happy 21st Birthday, Casey
On this date 21 years ago — July 28, 1993 — our son Casey was born. On his first birthday, we took him to Chuck E Cheese. On his 21st birthday, he’s in San Francisco having dinner with his girlfriend so we have to wish him a happy birthday over the phone. “I remember the day you were born like it was last week,” I say. “I was an integral part of it.” “Yeah, so was I,” he says. Right, but he doesn’t remember it like I do. And I don’t want to mention it on his special day, but he didn’t really do anything either. His mom and I did all the work and yet he gets all the glory and recognition. Think about that. “Happy birthday. I love you.” Read more →
The Softball Waivers
Our company’s having an in-house softball game tonight, hosted at a field across the street at UC Irvine . . . That’s not our actual team in the picture, the difference being that the players in the picture look like they may have been athletes at one time. I’m not playing because I have a piano lesson tonight. (Actually, I wouldn’t have played anyway because I can no longer do things like run and see that used to serve me so well on the diamond all those years ago. But the piano lesson is a convenient excuse.) Everyone who is playing had to sign a waiver provided by UCI. Good move. Company softball games are rife with injuries. I picture a scenario like this: Dear UCI Parents, We regret that your students are not able to graduate on time, but as you know, we’ve had to cut back drastically on… Read more →
Overreaction
Her parents must be pretty strict. They reported her missing just because she wasn’t home by 9? Read more →
The Smartest Kids in the World
Via Philip Greenspun: Amanda Ripley identifies the following major problems with American schools: people who are poorly educated are hired as schoolteachers teachers have limited autonomy (partly as a result of their low level of knowledge and ability) schools have multiple missions, only one of which is education, which leads to a loss of focus teachers and administrators dwell on student and family backgrounds so as to build up a catalog of excuses for poor educational outcomes parents are complacent regarding the low expectations set for their children Read more →
Raising Our Kids
Let's just hope these tablets are better at raising our kids than cable. — Paul Danke (@pauldanke) June 24, 2014 Read more →
Now We Can All Feel Good About Ourselves
Sheryl [Sandburg] wrote the homage or essay or ass-kissing-memo or whatever we are calling the Time 100 writings, about Beyonce. Sheryl talks about how Beyonce has changed the music industry. She’s a leader in song and dance and performance. But there’s exactly nothing surprising until Sheryl adds, “Beyonce does all this while being a full-time mother.” In that little sentence, Sandberg does something very big. Sandberg declares that you can have a full-time job and be a full-time mother. This is convenient. Because now Sandberg is a full-time mom who spends some days away from the kids signing autographs. And running Facebook. And Beyonce is a full-time mom who spends some days away from her daughter on billion-dollar concert tours. So basically anyone who gave birth is a full-time mom regardless of how much of their time is spent on kids. Now we can all feel good about ourselves regardless… Read more →
Small Obstinacies and a Few Proverbs
They have dragged out their life in stupor and semi-sleep, they have married hastily, they have made children at random. They have met other men in cafes, at weddings and funerals. Sometimes, caught in the tide, they have struggled against it without understanding what was happening to them. All that has happened around them has eluded them; long, obscure shapes, events from afar, brushed by them rapidly and when they turned to look all had vanished. And then, around forty, they christen their small obstinacies and a few proverbs with the name of experience, they begin to simulate slot machines: put a coin in the left hand slot and you get tales wrapped in silver paper, put a coin in the slot on the right and you get precious bits of advice that stick to your teeth like caramels. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea Read more →
Why Do (Some) Smart Kids Fail?
A woman is telling me about her two sons . . . they’ve grown up to be fine young men, she says. It’s disappointing, of course, that neither of them managed to finish high school but it was really unavoidable because the older boy was much smarter than his peers and so he was always bored and academically unengaged and finally dropped out completely, and the younger boy just imitated whatever the older boy did. I’ve heard this type of woulda-coulda-shoulda before and I have to admit I’ve never been totally receptive to it: this happened . . . then that happened . . . the kid did such-and-such . . . It sounds very passive. Parents aren’t supposed to be passive observers. There are intervention points every day. If things aren’t going in the right direction, you do something to take them in a different direction. Look in any… Read more →
Forget About Female Leadership
Everyone can shut up about “let’s get more women into leadership positions.” Because they don’t want leadership positions. Or they’d get them. Obviously. Women want to have time for their kids. And leaders – especially top-down leaders – dedicate their lives to their work. There won’t be female leadership and male leadership. There will be people who lead at home and people who lead at work. People will take ownership of outcomes for the areas of life they care most about. — Penelope Trunk Read more →
4 Links
5 Design Techniques to Incite User Emotion (UX Movement) 5 Modern WordPress Alternatives to Keep an Eye On (Six Revisions) Kafka’s Joke Book (McSweeney’s) Yoonique Baby Names: 2014 Edition (STFU, Parents) Read more →
The Hardest Available Challenge
One of my colleagues at work has a son in 6th grade. She’s trying to figure out which math class to put him in for 7th grade. Working backward, we know that “normal” kids take Algebra I in 9th grade, the smarter kids take Algebra I in 8th grade, and the smartest kids take Algebra I in 7th grade. Placement depends on how a kid scores on the math placement test. My co-worker’s concern is if her kid gets a top score on the placement test and he’s eligible to take Algebra I in 7th grade, does she want him to do that, or to wait till 8th grade? If he takes Algebra I in 7th grade, that would mean he’d be taking the hardest math classes all through high school. Would it be better from a college admission standpoint to take easier classes and get all A’s, or take… Read more →
Kids Eat Free
Souplantation is doing a Kids Eat Free promotion today for Presidents’ Day . . . This is unfair. We’ve been coming to Souplantation for 20 years. They NEVER had a Kids Eat Free promotion when our kid was young enough to participate. Now that he’s too old, they do Kids Eat Free day. I really feel that in recognition of our abiding loyalty to Souplantation, our kid should be able to eat free NOW, despite the fact that he’s 20 years old and eats as much as three normal guests . . . Read more →
Other People’s Kids
My wife is telling me that the parents of one of our son’s high school friends are moving back to their home country of Japan. She doesn’t understand how parents could move so far away from their children. Their two kids, both in their 20s, are staying here in California. “Well,” I say, “other people’s kids are often a little disappointing, in my opinion,” and she starts knocking on something that I’m pretty sure is not even made of wood. Read more →
ADHD in the Making
My family and I are enjoying a meal at a Japanese restaurant. In the booth behind me are a husband and wife and five kids, the oldest of whom looks to be about 12. One of the kids, a boy of about 5, is standing up and running a toy car back and forth along the divider between his booth and our booth. He gets bored with that after a while and starts drumming on the divider with a pair of chopsticks. The boy’s activities don’t bother me much . . . what bothers me is that it takes 15 minutes for one of the parents to tell him to stop it and sit down. He doesn’t do either and nothing else is said or done about the matter. In the near future, this boy’s inability to sit still and follow directions will get him “diagnosed” by a schoolteacher as… Read more →
We’re Still Smarter Than You Are
Teens from Asian nations dominated a global exam given to 15-year-olds, while U.S. students showed little improvement and failed to reach the top 20 in math, science or reading, according to test results released Tuesday. — Why Asian teens do better on tests than US teens – CSMonitor.com Why am I not shocked by that? Because Americans on the whole are dumb and lazy. We have lots of dumb, lazy parents raising dumb, lazy kids. The average American kid doesn’t compare well academically to the average kid in an Asian country where academics and hard work are valued, or to the average kid from a small, homogenous European country where it’s easier to get everyone pulling in the same educational direction. The U.S. is a big, diverse country and the average academic results are pulled down by a lot of dummkopfs. But still, the smartest people in the world are… Read more →
The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates
“Do not ride your bicycle around the corner,” the mother had told the daughter when she was seven. “Why not!” protested the girl. “Because then I cannot see you and you will fall down and cry and I will not hear you.” “How do you know I’ll fall?” whined the girl. “It is in a book, The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates, all the bad things that can happen to you outside the protection of this house.” “I don’t believe you. Let me see the book.” “It is written in Chinese. You cannot understand it. That is why you must listen to me.” “What are they, then?” the girl demanded. “Tell me the twenty-six bad things.” But the mother sat knitting in silence. “What twenty-six!” shouted the girl. The mother still did not answer her. “You can’t tell me anything because you don’t know! You don’t know anything!” And the girl ran… Read more →