Canada Day

There's nothing really to add to this list of Canadian geek contributions.

Well, except for another Robin Sparkles video:

Austin Reading

Austin's reading is getting very good. He reads signs all the time and today even looked over my shoulder and read an e-mail that I wrote.

From watching him read, and hearing him guess at words he doesn't know, I've come to appreciate how much reading is from recognizing whole words (or patterns) versus sounding out letters. There's a limited number of English words that are easy to sound out anyway. For instance, we read a book about a kid named Marvin who's family was moving. Austin would guess at any word with "M" and "V" in it, not always correctly. But it revealed how his mind is figuring things out.

I found a great book from the library recently by Adam Rex called Pssst!. It's about a girl who visits a zoo and the animals who request favors of her. Each interaction is very cute, with memorable dialogue (the kids can quote big chunks) and even the fairly uneventful pages of the girl walking to the next exhibit are filled with lots of background jokes, puns, and beautiful art. Recommended (also, available for a penny Used on Amazon).

Anyway, the connection to these two facts is that the other day Austin told me he wanted to read "Pissed."

Last few weeks

We're still here. Busy working and having fun. Here's a video clip of the latter from the 2008 Brown Reunion with Luca from California playing with Mari.

Obama music

I'd been thinking about Frank Sinatra campaigning for JFK and wondering where were the catchy campaign tunes of today? I'm not talking about just using a Celine Dion or Fleetwood Mac song as a "theme" but original tunes? The Will.i.am. tune is interesting but unsingable.

And then came my friend Liz, ethnomusicologist and all around cool person, with this link to songs about Barack Obama.

I think my favorite is the Miguel Orozco just because the chorus is catchy:

Como Se Dice…Como Se llama?
OBAMA! OBAMA!

I don't even know what it means, but it sounds good and it rhymes.

What sort of education?

Here are two recent stories about higher education in our country. One is from the Boston Globe Sunday magazine and wonders if vocational schools are really the best choice for kids. The other is from the Atlantic and suggests that there are some people who just aren't suited for college.

I'm saddened to report that I am more sympathetic to the second. I think that's all I'll say about it.

Softball news

This is the best sports story I've read in a long time. Worth your while, I think.

Radiolab interview

The Onion AV Club interviews the hosts of Radiolab. They rock.

Self portraits

The kids drew these a month or more ago, but I just got around to scanning them. (Austin says he helped on Mari's picture). Mari writes her name forward now.

Parenting, spousing

Here's a Slate article about modifying children's behavior. It's a lot like the NYTimes article that became the book about using techniques to train Shamu to train your spouse.

Great audiobook: Yiddish Policemen's Union

My second audiobook was a novel, Michael Chabon's Yiddish Policemen's Union. It was great. The story follows a homicide detective in Sitka, the Jewish state in Alaska. Yes, it's an alternate present in which Israel remains Arab run and the Americans offered a chunk of Alaska to the Jews. Like Hong Kong in 1997, though, the area is scheduled to revert back to the States. The murder mystery takes the detective through a bunch of interesting traditions and odd characters. There is one coincidence in the middle that sort of annoyed me--coincidences need to come closer to the beginning, I think. But the noir tone of the novel is excellent and the dialogue is wonderful.

The audiobook is read by Peter Riegert and he is really great. Each character has a distinct voice, and the Yiddishisms and names roll off his tongue like poetry. I find myself just saying the name Berko Shemets every once in a while.

Apparently the Coen brothers have the option to make this film! Riegert should definitely be up for the part of Meyer Landsman, the detective.

Last point: the audiobook was on 10 cds (including an interview with Chabon at the end), but the paperback book is 464 pages long. I was trying to decide if I could have read the book faster than listening to it, and I probably would have. But I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it as much. There is pleasure in being read to, and it was nice to enjoy every word of this book.