Jake loves sweeping the floor.

I need to buy Jake a small broom so he can help me sweep. Otherwise, he scoots over and grabs the broom from my hand and starts sweeping randomly.

While he's doing this, he's sitting in the dust pile on the floor, getting his bum covered in dirt and dust, and then dragging it around with him as he sweeps.

He seems to understand that I'm gathering dirt, but doesn't understand the overall purpose of sweeping - to clean the floor.

So I gave up and just let him help me sweep for 15 minutes. I was waiting for him to get bored. He didn't get bored. He loved it. He was concentrating hard. Sometimes the broom handle would hit his head (because it's so long and he's not coordinated).

Finally I sent him upstairs for a bath.

Do you truly know something if you know it for the wrong reasons?

This is called epistemology - philosophical discussions about the nature of knowledge. A friend and I were talking about this. He posed the above question to me and I told him it was a tough question but that my gut told me no.

If you know something for the wrong reason, you don't truly know that thing. I used the crude example of high school math text books with the answers in the back. If you turned to the back and wrote down the answers, you'd ace the assignment. But you'd obviously have no idea how to do math - so you truly wouldn't understand.

He agreed and used a better example. Imagine you're watching Wimbledon - but it was in actuality a re-run of last year's Wimbledon going on at the same time as this years. So, in fact, you thought you were watching this year's Wimbledon. And indeed it has all the same tennis stars and matches and lo and behold the same winner - Andre Agassiz.

So do you truly know the winner of Wimbledon? You'd say "Andre Agassiz" and you'd be correct. (Because he won last year as well.) But it seems obvious that you don't truly know the winner of this year's Wimbledon.

Only by concidence, your knowledge happened to be correct. You watched last year's Wimbledon, thinking it was this years, and that means your knowledge was incomplete, unbenowst to you.

Likewise, you also wouldn't truly know who won last year's Wimbledon - even though you just watched it on TV. That's because you thought you were watching this year's Wimbledon. So we have the same problem, but in reverse.

Why do women secretly listen to your phone conversations?

I've noticed throughout my working career that women listen-in on private phone calls. I'll be talking on the phone to my wife, and the women nearby will appear to be working away, but they're listening to everything I say.

I know this because they will often mention something later in the day that they could have only heard through my phone call.

In my last job, one woman nearby would directly ask me, "Who were you talking to?" after listening in on my phone calls. She obviously didn't care.

Cindy confirms this is the case. She says women "can't help" listening in on phone calls because it's evolution. She says women don't focus their attention like men do. Women need to be aware of all sounds going on around them so they can "hear the baby cry".

Men, on the other hand, tune out other sounds and focus on the prey. The hunt. That's why many men don't listen to women, and women get so mad.

I can easily ignore phone conversations around me. Cindy cannot.

This is the biggest and largest mass optical illusion.

When the moon is lower in the sky it appears bigger than when it's higher in the sky. This isn't the case. The moon in the sky is always the same size.

This is called the "moon illusion" and is well-documented. You can prove it by using a ruler to measure the moon as you extend your arm straight out. It will always measure the same size.

(Actually, technically the moon on the horizon looks about 1% smaller than an overhead moon due to atmospheric effects.)

The other day I was driving home and the moon looked HUGE in the sky. It's hard to believe that's just an optical illusion.

Another cool thing about the moon: it's the only object that every seeing human being has seen. Whether you're in China or America. Whether you lived now or thousands of years ago - everyone who wasn't blind has seen the moon - and the exact same side of the moon, the same face.

No other object is that popular, except maybe for the sun, but the surface of the sun is a changing mass of gas and fire. So it's not really the same "thing" that I saw yesterday, although it is the same overall object.

The world is going to end in 2012.

Apparently they're saying the world is going to end in 2012. The 5,000 year Mayan calender apparently starts a new cycle in 2012.

I look forward to the apocalypse. It would be kind of fun living through the destruction of mankind and the planet earth, as long as there wasn't much pain involved.

I picked up 2012 : the return of Quetzalcoatl by Daniel Pinchbeck. His idea is that the world won't end, but that there will be a transformation of consciousness that will lead to a new inventions, discoveries and paradigm shifts.

I got all this from the first 5 pages or so. The book is huge and I won't be reading it. It seems a little self-indulgent and long winded to me. Hundreds and hundreds of pages to describe what I just said in a couple sentences...

I'm not sure what evidence he's presenting, but of course it would be all soft, untestable, sociological arguments or speculations. There's no way any one could predict what will happen in 2012, if anything.

And that's the problem with books like these. They're pointless because nothing will happen in 2012. It will be a year just like any other.

I remember when boxing day used to be a big deal.

I think Boxing Day was a big deal when I was a kid. I vaguely remember that it was illegal for stores to open on boxing day, but many did anyway and faced government fines for breaking the law.

How silly.

I also remember huge crowds and line ups - similar to "Black Friday" in the States where Walmart shoppers trample each other trying to buy stereos.

Except this was Canada so it was much more polite. No trampling. Even in high school I remember walking around the malls on boxing day, shoulder to shoulder with all the people trying to save 30% on a $20 compact disc.

First, are the prices that good on Boxing Day? I don't know. I imagine they're pretty good, but not spectacular. Stores still need to make money. They don't give stuff away. So my guess is that in most cases you would be paying more than wholesale.

Second, is it worth the hassle? Think of the crowds and lineups and general inconvenience. Is it worth it to put up with this to save a few dollars? Maybe. Not for me though. Not for a lot of people. In fact, I'd pay 30% more if I could guaranteed that the malls would be empty, I'd have great service and the parking lot would be wide open.

Third, I bet half the stuff they advertise is gone. You'd show up the store and they'd do a classic bait and switch. Unless you were one of the idiots who lined up outside at 3am - then you may have been lucky enough to buy that object that will change your life forever and make you happy.

Nowadays boxing day isn't a big deal anymore. Places like Costco have low, warehouse prices all the time. Regular stores have boxing week sales. No rush. You can buy most things online for pretty cheap, and if you really want to cheap out you can go to Craigslist.

Isn't a boxing day blow out sale such a strange thing? I mean, here we are, complaining for the last month about the commercialization of Christmas and how poor we are and how it's such a hassle to buy gifts, then THE DAY AFTER Christmas we rush out to the malls to trample on people so we can buy more shit.

Now I'm angry.

Christmas is awesome when you're a kid.

When you're an adult Christmas is a bit of a pain. There's a lot to do. Tons of obligations.

When you're a kid Christmas is the greatest thing in the world.

I remember being so excited that I couldn't sleep on Christmas eve. It was all about the toys. I wanted as much as possible. A huge, giant pile of toys.

This is actually a pretty good metaphor for our culture today. When we're sad we think it's because we're "empty". Therefore the quick and easy solution is to buy as many things as possible.

Things will fill us up and make us more happy. By the way, this isn't just my opinion. I got the idea from a great psychology paper I read called Why the Self Is Empty: toward a Historically Situated Psychology by Philip Cushman (1990) "American Psychologist".

He writes, "...the current self is constructed as empty, and as a result the state controls its population not by restricting the impulses of its citizens, as in Victorian times, but by creating and manipulating their wish to be soothed, organized, and made cohesive by momentarily filling them up."

He says that America, after World War II, became a culture obsessed with self-improvement. "As the individual's growth, enjoyment, and fulfillment became the single most valued aspect of life."

Merry Christmas!

The worst things about kids' toys.

You only notice or think about kids toys when you're a parent. A few things I've learned about kids' toys:

- It's really hard to predict a good toy. You can never tell from the package.
- A huge percentage of kids toys are poorly designed or made.
- Some of them do or say weird things. I swear one of Jake's toys yells out "BITCH!!"

Here's a list of the worst things about kids' toys, in no particular order.

1.) Batteries. Some toys use the expensive AAA batteries - and just eat them up like candy. Also, when the batteries die, the toy goes a little crazy and starts shouting out gibberish. Usually at 1am.

2) Some toys have buttons or switches that are too hard to push for kids. Also, some toys don't react fast enough when you push the button.

3) Some toys have annoying little reminders that sound after a few minutes of being idle. "Play with me!!!" Which sucks, because we've just distracted Jake enough to play with something less annoying and suddenly you hear, "Play with me!" and Jake scurries back to play with the annoying toy.

4) Some toys encourage bad behaviour. For example, they make a sound when you throw them.

5) Some toys miss opportunities to educate. When you press an animal button, it makes the wrong sound. Or the songs don't quite sound right. Or one toy promotes its name brand. "Thank you for playing with Leap Frog!!" Marketing.

Some food items that have improved remarkably.

Remember how gross frozen pizza used to be? I remember cooking it in university. It was a round, rubbery disk of fake cheese and stale tomato sauce. It tasted nothing like a pizza.

Instant popcorn used to be pretty gross. I'm thinking of that popcorn you held over the stove element. It would burn and half the kernels wouldn't pop. Then microwave popcorn came along and it's just awesome.

Airplane food used to be nasty. Then the airplanes started hiring chefs to prepare menus and the food became good. Impressive, actually.

TV dinners used to be gross. Now there are a whole bunch of Lean Cuisine frozen meals - from lasagna to stir fry. Very tasty.

When I was a kid, Doritos chips used to be pretty gross. Then they came out with Cool Ranch and a whole bunch of exotic flavours. Now Doritos are awesome.

Diet cola used to be awful. You could barely bring diet Coke and Pepsi to your lips. The aspartame taste was horrendous. Now a days, diet soda tastes almost the same as regular soda. They've really improved it.

Jesus wasn't born on Christmas.

It's pretty common knowlege that Jesus wasn't born on December 25th. The Bible never says what time of year he was born, and old Christian writings don't mention celebrations around his birth.

The two theories are:

1) December 25th was chosen by church leaders because that's when traditional pagan feasts and celebrations took place, and they adapted many pagan customs.

2) December 25th was chosen by church leaders because of links between passover (his death) and his conception.

Either way, it doesn't matter much in our society. Santa is much more popular than Jesus. Parents actively tell their kids that Santa rides around on a sleigh and gives them presents. And that's what kids care about.

The master manipulator.

I'm grudgingly impressed with the way Jake can manipulate people (including us). He's a master at avoiding at eating and he's developed some sneaky tricks to use on us and the daycare workers.

Here's a few of the things he does:

Fake tired.
He pretends he's exhausted and tired. He signs sleep and lies his head down on the tray. He slouches forward as well and pretends he's sleepy. This really tricked us at first. We'd get him down and then he's immediately start playing with tons of energy. Now we say, "Sit up straight" and pull his head and body to a sitting position.

Turning his head to Look Somewhere
He'll pretend to be interested in the kitchen behind him and he'll turn his head to watch something, just as we prepare to feed him. So we've turned his chair around so he's facing the kitchen. Now when he spins around, there's only a wall.

Holding Food in His Mouth
He will hold food in his mouth and stop chewing.

Fake Sips
By far his most clever trick. When we first started behavioural therapy he'd drink properly and gulp his milk. He'd drink 100 ml a meal. Now he's back to 5 ml to 50 ml if we're lucky. He figured out that he can simply hold the cup in his mouth, and it looks like he's drinking the milk. He does a fake little swallow, but just swallows his saliva.

The trick is telling tell his daycare worker to be forceful. They don't like forcing kids to eat. We say, "If it was up to him, he'd starve." The trick is also to keep up with his avoidance. As he figures out our strategies, he's able to counter them.

My Christmas music awards.

I think most Christmas music is cheesy. Occasionally you hear a good song. Here's my list of Christmas music awards:

Best Christmas Song: We Three Kings.
This song has 2 great melodies. I like the beginning "we three kings" melody and the chorus "oh star of wonder" melody.

Most Depressing Verse: We Three Kings.
Another award for this great tune. Most depressing verse. Here are the words: "Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume/Breathes of life of gathering gloom/Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying/Sealed in the stone-cold tomb". Awesome.

Most melodramatic Christmas Song: Happy Christmas by John Lennon
"So this is Christmas, what have you done?". It's usually its accompanied by a television commercial of starving African children.

Coolest Christmas Song: Drummer Boy.
It's cool because of the drums. Great rhythm.

Best Rock Christmas Song: Jingle bell Rock
The original Jingle bell Rock. Can't remember who sang it. I love the guitar beginning. The rest of the song is average. But that little riff at the beginning is sweet.

Best Modern Rock Christmas Song: God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen by Barenaked Ladies
They did well covering this song. It's pretty fast-paced and catchy.

We had our "team meeting" about Jake.

On Thursday I had a "team meeting" with all of Jake's kind-hearted but pretty useless community support people. His physiotherapist, speech therapist, something else, daycare worker and daycare manager showed up (the daycare people aren't useless).

The idea is that we "set goals" for Jake's progress so that we can "all be on the same page".

Every few months we get a phone call from one of the "team members" to have a "goal meeting". Usually it doesn't happen because they only work 10 hours a week and we can never settle on a date or time. But I guess their year-end evaluations are due and they need to fill out some paperwork on Jake so they all agreed on a time and place.

I told the daycare people that they didn't have to come because it was pretty useless. I didn't go to the last one, but Cindy told me they all basically sat around asking her the same questions over and over again and telling her that Jake "eats normally". A pretty bizarre thing to say considering he has a g-tube because he doesn't eat or drink on his own, and is underweight.

The daycare people said they wanted to go and asked me if the behaviourist was coming. I said, "Hell no". We pay her $150 an hour to teach us how to make Jake eat, not to sit around and talk about goals, ask dumb questions and make inane statements.

So we all went. I brought Jake along so I could use him as an excuse to duck out early when I started getting annoyed. (I gotta be polite because they control some of our funding.)

I showed up, sat there politely for an hour, then left. It was what I expected - pretty pointless. Talk means nothing. I can sit around and talk for hours about everything I want Jake to do, but that doesn't get anything done.

The most expensive movie of all time is going to suck.

Today, the most expensive movie of all time is hitting theatres. James Cameron's "Avatar".

The movie is reputed to have cost $500 million to make. That's half a billion dollars. That amount of money can buy two whole African countries.

And what will we get for this money? We will get 2 hours of amazing, unbelievable, impressive visual CGI effects. These effects will be awesome for about 5 minutes. Then the boredom will set in.

That's sort of the way it is with fireworks. You're interested for a few minutes, then the mindless explosions get boring.

A good movie needs a good story, with good characters and strong writing. Look at Star Wars. The original Star Wars had lame special effects but an amazing story. The new Star Wars had great effects, but a lame story.

Which were better? Not one person will tell you the new Star Wars movies are superior. Not one.

I'm skeptical that a half billion dollar movie will be any good. Why? Because they spent all the money on special effects. They didn't put any resources into characters or scripts.

Why did they spend half a billion on special effects? Because the script was so bad they needed dazzling effects to make the movie work.

Either way, the movie is going to suck.

Post script:

(By the way, I'm not saying Avatar won't make profit. I think that's almost a forgone conclusion because we'll be hit over the head with the hype and people will go see it. I'm saying the movie won't be very good. It can't be.)

(Let's look at a couple examples. 1) Pirates of the Caribbean. Made a ton of money - but the movies were mediocre at best. The last 2 were downright boring. 2) Spiderman - made a ton of money. But the movies got worse and worse.

Finally, let's look at a counter-example. Lord of the Rings. Great special effects and great movies. So it is possible that Avatar could pull it off, just not very likely.)

I miss hearing about Britney Spears.

I was listening to the radio the other day and thinking, "I really miss hearing about Britney Spears."

I remember fondly the days when I'd hear various news stories about her. I'd see her picture on magazines and newspapers. I'd even hear a few of her songs on the radio.

I think she had gotten married, then divorced, then had kids and parented them poorly, then cut her hair and messed up a few dance shows and perhaps took drugs. Her sister got pregnant, and Britney was taken away in an ambulance at one point, I think.

Oh and she got married in Vegas for one night, and she french kissed Madonna at an award show. Here is a list of Brittany's studio albums:

Baby One More Time (1999)
Oops!... I Did It Again (2000)
Britney (2001)
In the Zone (2003)
Blackout (2007)
Circus (2008)

Apparently she's coming out with another one in 2010 - which I suppose will make me happy because we'll start hearing about her again. Right now it's all Lady GaGa. Meh.

PS: I just saw her on a magazine cover. Apparently she's getting married for the third time in 2010. So I suppose we will be hearing more about her shortly.

Subway is disappointing.

You know what? Subway is disappointing. I've been disappointed the last few times I've gone there. It's not a horrible restaurant. It's just not very good.

Which is too bad because they have so much potential. It's clean, relatively healthy. The service is good and the prices are reasonable. It's just that the sandwiches fall short. I think the vegetables are a little wilted. Their bread all tastes the same.

And the six inch size is just a little too small. While the 12 inch size is too big.

I like Quizno's better. Better presentation (a little basket), you get a hot pepper, they invented toasting the bun and they have better sizes (8 inch). On the downside: expensive.

But back to Subway: we had it last night and the bread was a little stale. The sandwiches are also a little bland. Poor Jared had to eat there for years. I would have puked every day, and that's how I would have lost my weight.

The endless email.

I guess this would be considered a moderately interesting work story. Yesterday, a guy sent me an email I didn't understand. He said:

We still need our tour out form and roster filled out before I can send to the UK for their approval................[link]

I wrote him back:

Hi Bob, I'm confused by this email. Can you explain what you need me to do? Thanks,
Jim

He wrote back the exact same thing:

We still need our tour out form and roster filled out before I can send to the UK for their approval................[link]

I was greatly amused. I've never seen this before so I thought for a moment and wrote back:

Hi Bob, I'm confused by this email. Can you explain what you need me to do? Thanks,Jim

I was half hoping he'd write back the same email, but instead he wrote:

I don’t believe I can be any clearer – here are the procedures to follow for international tours....................................read the linked page, and forward to the school.

Okay, maybe that's not such a great story. But it helped break up the day. Plus when I told my wife she said I was "cheeky". And I needed a blog entry for today.

I want to steal from stores as revenge for poor customer service.

Sometimes I think a little theifing is in order. Especially when I get bad customer service.

It's easy to put something on your cart or your tray and then just don't take it out at the cashier. It's the obvious stealing technique. If anyone calls you on it, you simply "forgot" and you act embarrassed.

A few times, I've given Jake toys to hold and then pushed him through the line without bothering to pay for the item. So he's stolen some things for me. Once it was a bag of licorice.

Another time at Canadian Tire I was waiting around for someone for 10 minutes. The sales guy left and never came back. I wanted to borrow a measuring tape to see if an item fit in my trunk.

I got fed up and took one from the shelf and walked out the store to my car and measured. I can't remember if I returned it. I may have put it down on the ground in the parking lot.

We should steal from stores who give us bad customer service! Why not? It will teach them a lesson. They obviously don't care...

One major problem with cell phones...

For the most part, cell phones are great. Yes, other people can be annoying - but the convenience of cell phones far outweighs the minority of people who abuse them.

I was in university (mid 90s) when cell phones first started being popular. I don't really remember, but I imagine they were big in size.

I do remember my roommate making fun of people who walked around talking on the cell phone. He openly pointed at them and said out loud, "Cell phone geek!"

Now everyone has one.

But there is one major problem. A cell phone makes it easier for the wife to call you up and yell at you. In the old days your spouse had to wait until you were home. Now, with the advent of cell phones, castigation is instant.

People in our town are beginning to recognize us.

People in our town are beginning to know us - or more specifically Jake. They will come up to us and talk and we don't know who they are.

Sometimes they get excited when they see Jake walking or doing some new skill. "Oh look at that!" they will shout. This happened at a toy store recently. The woman apparently knew who Jake was, and he had been taking a couple steps.

If we go to a restaurant (which is rare), the server will talk to us like she knows us. "I remember when you came in here last year with him." You do?

It's sort of weird, but kind of cool. I guess it's sort of what a celebrity feels like on a much smaller scale.

Also, all the other daycare parents know Jake. We only know a couple of the other parents, and I barely know any of the other kids.

People pretend that they don't like Christmas.

I've noticed that people openly groan about Christmas. "Oh no it's already here!" they'll say. Or "I haven't started my shopping," or "[groan] I have to put up my decorations soon".

People complain about how the stores are already decorating, and the stores put out advertisements saying how "busy" you are this holiday season and how stressful it is, so you should just buy their product.

Television commercials show stressed out people, awkward inlaws, terrible gifts. People complain about the corny Christmas music.

If this is all true, than why do we even celebrate Christmas?

The answer is that people actually like Christmas. It's cool to pretend that we don't, but we do. No one likes to admit this.

Even my co-worker was complaining about Christmas. Then I noticed through various comments that she liked Christmas. I confronted her. "You actually LOVE Christmas, don't you?"

"Yeah, I do..." she admitted.

Tiger Woods had 7 or 8 affairs while married.

Now that it's come to light Tiger Woods was cheating on his wife, I ask people if they're surprised. I get mainly two responses:

1) "Yes! I'm very disappointed. How could he do that to his wife? He's going to lose his sponsors."

2) "No big deal. He's a normal billionaire. They all cheat on their wives."

On the one hand, Tiger made a promise to be faithful to his wife. Breaking this promise, hurting his family and jeopardizing his career seems spectacularly dumb.

On the other hand, Tiger is a male human being whose genes have programmed him to want sex with as many beautiful women as possible. Even if his willpower is 99% - and surely as a professional athlete he's been propositioned over 100 times - the one time he makes a mistake brands him forever as a "cheater". (Of course he made 7 or 8 mistakes.)

Doesn't sound fair.

This situation brings up the fascinating question: is monogamy a natural state between two human beings? I don't know.

What I do know is that many male rodents deposit a plug of mucus inside the female's reproductive tract after they ejaculate. The mucus plug stops other male sperm from going into the female's vagina.

But the rat penis has a little suction cup at the tip. It sucks out the plug like a toilet plunger. Some females reach inside their vagina and pull out the plug with their claws. Then they eat the plug.

Will the Copenhagen climate summit change anything?

Right now the United Nations Climate Change Conference is taking place in Copenhagen, Denmark between December 7 and December 18, 2009.



They've booked hundreds of limousines and hundreds of private jets - for the world's richest, most powerful leaders/politicians to tell us: Do as I say, not as I do.



Will this change anything? It's impossible to know but the following points are interesting things to consider, and may shape your answer.



* The richest countries got rich because they polluted and burned coal as they became industrialized. Now these same countries are telling the rest of the world not to do that.



* The plan of the conference is to give a UN body the power to directly intervene in the financial, economic, tax and environmental affairs of all the nations that sign the Copenhagen treaty. Okay, how many countries will let that happen?



* The plan calls for the world's wealthy countries to give $150 billion each year by 2020 to help poorer countries transition to a low-carbon development path. Except the money will probably come out of existing aids budgets. If the money comes from money already earmarked to go to developing nations, what's the point? It's like giving my son $10 to improve himself, but then taking the money out of his $10 allowance.

We got Jake to poop on the potty.

Last night, Jake was grunting so Cindy picked him up and put him on his potty. This is the first time we've managed to do this.

He wanted to get off, but Cindy showed him the switch where you can flush the toilet. It makes a little flushing sound. He liked the switch so he sat there flushing the toilet while he pooped.

Then we clapped and made a big deal and showed him his poop. He seemed a little surprised by the poop - I guess he's never seen his poop before. Then he tried to put his foot in it, but I held him back.

Good times!

Oh my GOD Michael Jackson died!!!!!!

Holy crap! Michael Jackson died of heart failure. Holy crap!

I remember growing up to Michael Jackson. I loved him. I had his Thriller and Off the Wall albums. My friend Jason dressed up as Micheal Jackson for Halloween.

He was great. At the end of the 80s he started getting a little weird. He burned his hair during the Pepsi commercial and then slowly disfigured himself through a succession of surgeries.

He became a bizarre, eccentric dude. I always felt sorry for him. Now he's dead. Hard to believe. They're saying it's a drug overdose. Poor guy. He was so young.

Not just a cliche.

I used to think that when parents were asked about the gender of their unborn child, and they said they didn't care, as long as the baby was healthy - I used to think they were lying.

I thought, they must care. The "healthy" thing was just what you were "supposed" to say. It was what society expected you to say.

Having a child with a disability, I can now tell you categorically that I was wrong. Cindy and I don't care at all if the baby is a boy or a girl. In fact, we don't often talk about the gender. If we do talk about the gender we only say neutral, practical things like, "If it's a girl, we have to buy a few pink outfits to get past the first few months."

This time we're not going to ask for the gender ahead of time. It's not that important, and we don't really want to know. What is important is HEALTH. That's really everything. That's all we care about.

It's certainly our biggest worry this time around.

Man in coma for 23 years was actually awake!

A fake news story came out a couple days ago: A man who was supposedly in a coma for 23 years was actually awake the whole time! Now he's communicating! It's a miracle!

Sure. And I'll sell you some real estate on the moon.

Anyway, I was thinking how horrible it would be if this was true. If everyone thought you were comatose 23 years. I think you would go insane from boredom. Literally you would lose your mind.
Then I got to thinking, imagine if you had discovered some ultimate and amazing fact about human nature during that time (because you had nothing else to do except observe humans and think).

Let's say that the observation you made would revolutionize human communication. Perhaps you noticed some subconscious way of communicating. Since you're comatose, this ground-breaking discovery would never be known!

Now that's frustrating. More frustrating than just being comatose. Being comatose and having some major discovery that you can't communicate.

The most depressing liquour store I've ever seen.

Last Friday I went to the liquor store I usually go to to buy beer. I always dislike going there and I could never pinpoint the reason why.

I think I figured it out. First of all, it's a sausage factory. All guys. No women ever go there. The only women who work there are young, female cashiers who try to dress slutty, but can't really pull it off because they're not that pretty.

Second, the line is huge.

Third, while standing in the huge line, I looked around at all the other customers and they all looked like me. It was freaky. They were all about my height and body type. They wore my kinds of clothes and they all looked tired, out-of-shape and scruffy after a day's work.

They were "me" at different ages. In front of me was a Jim who was 5 years older. Behind me was a Jim in his mid-twenties. We were all heading home to our families after a week at work, buying beer so that we could relax.

They were all standing in line with me. We were all together. I hated it. This is what I've become.

Men could never be pregnant.

I was talking to Cindy the other day and I mentioned something about men being pregnant. She laughed out loud, right in my face.

"What?" I said.

"NO WAY you could be pregnant!" she said.

She went on to describe how I'd be a super whiny ball of mush lying in bed all day and moaning. I'd demand to be served. I'd demand to be fed. I'd complain all the time.

"You know how grouchy you get when you're tired or hungry? Imagine that plus being sick all day long, plus not sleeping."

Then she felt a little bad for me. "It's not just you - I'm saying any man couldn't be pregnant. You guys are a bunch of wimps."


I tried to defend mankind, but she was right. We are wimps.

Cindy said, "If men had to have babies, the birth rate would drop to zero."

She said humans would go extinct.

The Amazing Kreskin

For our anniversary, Cindy bought me tickets to see the Amazing Kreskin for a 2 hour show in Maple Ridge. Kreskin is a legendary mentalist.

The show was pretty good. Most impressive is when he reads people's minds. He asks the audience if someone is thinking of a certain thing and then a person might raise their hand. He asks the person to stand and proceeds to "read their mind" by stating facts.

For example, Kreskin said, "Does 'bird' come to anyone's mind?"

A guy raised his hand and said, "I was just thinking of my bird."

Then Kreskin said, "Do you like music? Elvis Presley?"

The guy said, "My bird is named Elvis."

Then Kreskin nailed about 5 more facts, including the guy's birthday and roommate's name.

For some people, he'd only nail a few facts and then stop talking. For other, people he'd be on a role and nail 5 or 6 facts. He only made one mistake: He told a guy his birthday was in 78 but it was actually 58.

We hid his cheque in the theatre and he found it. He also did some fun hypnosis. Kreskin claimed that he wasn't psychic and he didn't do tricks. He didn't understand how he "knew" these things, but insisted there was no magic and no accomplices.

One thing I noticed is that he tells a lot of stories and tends to drone on and scatter his thoughts. At first I thought it was just because he was old. Then I thought he's doing it on purpose, telling us subconsciously what to do so he could later read our minds. Clever. Or maybe I'm just reading too much into it.

It also occurs to me that I think Kreskin has perfect hearing and perfect pitch. He seems to hear things from people's voices and he's a whiz at the piano.

It was a pretty good show.

I'm amazed at construction.

I'm still amazed that we can build new highways and bridges. Construction workers never seem to be working. They're aways just standing around watching one guy dig a hole.

I'm even more amazed that they can keep roads and highways and bridges open, at the same time that they're re-building or improving these same roads. That whole idea of keeping traffic flowing while they build around the cars seems so impressive to me.

The other day I was driving down the highway and I saw a sign that said in two weeks they were closing the highway for 10 minutes at 1am. They knew 2 weeks in advance that they were closing the highway for 10 minutes! Talk about great planning.

And only 10 minutes? Hell they can close it for a few hours and I'd be impressed. But 10 minutes and in the middle of the night? They're being super nice and considerate. I wonder what they're going to be doing for that 10 minutes that compels them to close the road?

I hate how exaggerated the news is.

I hate how every news story is exaggerated with catastrophic words. We're in a "hunger crisis", there was a "financial meltdown", swine flu is a "pandemic".

C'mon. When you use the word "catastrophe" too much, it loses it's meaning. If we keep calling every news story a "tremendous tragedy" and the "worst [blank] since [blank]" their seriousness and weightiness becomes diluted.

If every minor bad thing is a "disaster", then how do we know when there is truly a disaster?

After awhile nothing can shock me. Everything has already broken down and destroyed. Society has already collapsed. And I'm still here. Eating and wearing warm clothes and living in decent shelter.

We should stop exaggerating because when I turn on the news and hear that something is "devastated" I don't pay attention any more. I assume it's a simple exaggeration.

Should I bailout failing local tv stations?

I guess local broadcasters like CTV, Global and CBC, have been asking the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission to tax cable and satellite customers for receiving over-the-air television stations.

In other words, they're losing money because no one watches their crappy shows and they want the government to take my money and give it to them.

My thoughts are: there's a reason you're losing money. It's because there is no demand for your programming. People don't want to watch your shows. So you should fail or change. You shouldn't ask the government for a bailout.

Why? Because I don't want the government deciding what I should be watching on TV and taking my money to finance shows that no one watches.

Local is not always better. In fact, local is very often inferior. That's why we have free trade. It's why we're able to buy better quality, cheaper products elsewhere. Same goes with television and movies and radio and entertainment.

Modern Warfare vs. Twilight New Moon

Modern Warfare is a first-person shooter video game. Twilight New Moon is a fantasy-romance movie based on the novel by author Stephenie Meyer.

Both were released at the same time (mid-November). Every news story was about how Twilight New Moon was so popular and it was breaking records and was a cultural phenomenon. Every magazine cover featured Bella and Edward.

I heard a couple news stories about Modern Warfare.

Here's a comparison:

Modern Warfare 2
- first day sales $310 million
- first 5 days sales $550 million

Twilight New Moon
- first day sales $26.3 million
- first week $296 million

The lesson here is that whenever the media tells you that something is a cultural phenomenon, it's not telling you that there is something else a whole lot bigger.

In this case, it's a video game. No one wants to hear that. People who play video games are viewed as losers and geeks by the media. They're viewed as a tiny, insignificant subculture.

Who's your daddy New Moon!!!!

Our 12 week ultrasound.

On November 18, Cindy and I went for a 12 week ultrasound where they would do a bunch of preliminary tests to see if the baby has down syndrome.

First, they checked his face. The doctor said there was a "nose bone", which apparently is a good sign the baby is healthy. Apparently babies with down syndrome often don't have a nose bone.

Then he checked blood flow for a vein leading to the heart. Normal flow. Another good sign. Babies with down syndrome often have holes in their heart (as we know only too well...).

Then he checked growth. Normal size. Good.

Then he checked fluid behind the neck. Normal amount of fluid. Babies with down syndrome seem to have lots of fluid back there.

All these are good signs and we were pleased. He gave Cindy some blood tests and then a batch for some more and then, apparently, when they analyze the results they will let us know with 95% certainty whether the baby has down syndrome.

Meanwhile, it was a fun day. I could see the baby clearly. At one point it waved it's hand at me when I was talking to it. It fell asleep and wasn't moving and we were all waiting for it. The doctor came over and started jiggling the womb, trying to wake it up so he could see better.

Good times.

Watch for these Christmas cliche stories. (part 2)

Hmmm looks like there are more Christmas cliche stories than I thought. Here are 5 more:

6) Christmas Retail Slump People aren't spending as much and the stores are losing money. We're in retail slump and sales are "slower than expected". Interview with sad-looking shop owner.

7) Silly Story About Santa Every year Santa does something silly. He does a dance poll strip tease or goes water skiing or steals from kids or something dumb. Picture included.

8) Dangerous Christmas Toys That Kill Children Every year China produces some awesome toys that unfortunately hurt kids. We'll hear about it. We'll hear about the recalls and the angry parents.

9) Food Bank Donations are Down No one is donating to the food banks this year! We need help from the public. Bring in your canned goods. Also: Homelessness is way up this winter. All the shelters are filled and people are forced to sleep in the cold street.

10) Dumb Toy Is Latest Craze This silly toy is the latest craze among the kids. You can buy one on ebay for a million dollars. Here's a clip of shoppers in a store fighting to buy this latest toy. Ho hum. Heard it before.

Watch for these Christmas cliche stories. (part 1)

Every Christmas season I've noticed the same stories in the media. See how many of these you come across this year.

1) The Heartless Thief Steals From Local Charity, Food Bank or Not For Profit.
This is the obligatory story of thieves stealing toys for kids or something. You hear about it every year.

2) Holiday Advice.
I'm sick of these pathetic stories. How to Survive Your Work Party. How to Keep off the Weight This Christmas. How to blah blah blah. They're all the same re-cycled, filler news stories from years past.

3) Latest Website for Tracking Santa
Guess what? There's a website that tracks Santa and you can watch his progress!! Give me a break. There are a ton of these websites and they're all hokey and fake. Every year I hear about a new way to track Santa.

4) Outrageous Story about Banning the Word "Christmas".
Every year we have the story raging about how you're not allowed to say Christmas anymore. Or something similar. This is so old. I was mad about this last year, the year before and the year before that. I don't want to hear about it again.

5) Lots of Snow / No Snow Expected
Because of this current El Nino-kind-of weather system, we're going to have a very very snowy Christmas. Or, in fact, we're going to have a dry, snowless Christmas.

Nothing has improved in the last 10 years.

I just read an article about the economy in the States. It's about the same as it was 10 years ago.

Over the past 10 years, not one new job has been created in the private sector (but the population has grown 8%). The stock market is at about the same level, despite the government pouring billions of your tax dollars into it.

In other words, all the work that's been done in the last 10 years hasn't made anyone more prosperous. How many weekends have you worked in the last 10 years? How much stress did you have?

How many days did you show up sick because you had to get that project done? How much sleep did you lose?

All for nothing. We're at the same level as we were a decade ago. This decade has essentially been a waste. We might as well have taken the last 10 years off.

Of course you might argue that your business made small improvements in efficiency or service. You might argue that products are a little better nowadays. But the point is, you're not any richer.

The country isn't any better off in an economic sense. This means that we've all been running on the treadmill, just to maintain.

We're covered in sweat, our hearts are pounding, our legs are sore. And we haven't gone anywhere. We're huffing and puffing just to stay in the sample place.

Maybe the tens will be a better decade.

My eyes glaze over whenever I hear "carbon neutral" or "carbon offset".

I'm skeptical.

The idea is that you pay an extra tax that is used to purchase a "carbon offset", which really isn't any particular thing. It's an idea - the idea being that your payment goes toward an undefined project, which one day could help the environment.

There are no standards in place. You are not actually reducing your "carbon footprint", literally. Big companies say things like, "We're running a carbon-neutral project" and they get to stamp lots of happy-faces all over their paperwork.

Yesterday I learned that carbon probably doesn't even heat up the planet. It's only correlated with global-warming, and correlation does not equal causation. The biggest thing that causes greenhouse effects is water vapour. Go figure. Water.

Also, the globe isn't heating up all that much.

"The only temperature data we can trust are satellite measurements, and they only go back to 1979. They show no warming in the southern hemisphere, and the warming trend in the northern hemisphere appears to have waned since 2001." link

Finally, only rich people in rich countries (like ours) can afford carbon offsets. Forcing developing countries to pay an extra tax hurts the people who live there. Think about it. When we were developing and growing, we NEVER had to pay a tax to the environment.

But we're asking China and India to do just that.

Defend yourself or not?

Lately at work I've been finding myself in an interesting situation. I'll get a comment or a hint from someone that I made an error. Nothing overt and nothing accusatory.

Just a hint - almost like a backhanded compliment. This is more like a subtle, (very subtle), accusation. Sometimes it's my boss. Sometimes it's just some random "customer".

When this happens I have a dilemma. Should I respond to defend myself? That's my first instinct. But then I think, "That just shows I'm defensive. It's not cool." Plus I could be imagining the hint. Maybe there wasn't anything accusatory at all.

I think a much better way is to simply ignore the subtle hint. You have no obligation to respond to a hint that you made a mistake. You maybe have an obligation to respond to a direct accusation - but a hint is just a hint.

Important people don't have time to respond to hints. They'd ignore them. They'd focus their energy on continuing to do the best work they possibly can. That's what I'm going to try to do.

An Epic Journey.

Lately I've been having some epic journeys - "containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation" - on the commute home after work.

I leave around 4:30pm, just as it's getting dark, and I arrive at home at what feels like midnight. Everything is dark. It's been pouring rain so I've been staring out of a water-streaked windshield, for hours, lines of red brake lights stretching off into the infinite distance.

I'm drained. Sometimes my leg hurts from pressing the gas and break over and over. My eyes are sore. I ache. I step in the house and am faced with an exhausting task of making dinner, cleaning, putting Jake to bed, cleaning some more.

On Fridays I need alcohol to wind down from a week of this.

Well the latest news is that my company is moving to Maple Ridge! A mere 15 minutes from my house, a few minutes from Jake's daycare! This is insanely good news, if it happens. (The problem is things change so much you never know if it will really happen until you're moving your furniture into the new office.)

I estimate it will save Jake almost 2 hours in daycare. That's a huge difference. It will save me a ton of driving and just in time for the messy winter season. (We're set to move in early December.)

This is a huge stroke of luck as Maple Ridge generally does not have any office jobs or businesses. I should know - I spent a year looking for a job in MR to no avail. Hard to believe out of all the places in the Lower mainland, the place where I work is moving 15 minutes from my house.

I'm flabbergasted. I only have a month left of epic journeys.

They changed the smell of our bathroom at work.

This morning I walked into our bathroom at work and it smells different. Sweeter. More vanillaey and bleachy.

It was jarring. I've been here for 7 months and my nose had quickly adjusted to the smell of the bathroom. I didn't notice it anymore. When I walked into the bathroom, if I noticed a smell at all, it was the foul smell of defecation.

Today it's all changed. The new smell is not unpleasant, just overpowering. I find myself wanting to breathe through my mouth - which isn't so good. If I breathe through my mouth it means the air won't filter through my nose hairs. I'll be breathing in raw shit particles.

I'm sure in a few weeks, my nose will perfectly adjust to this new bathroom smell. By then we're moving to a new location and THAT bathroom will have a smell.

By the way, when you move offices, here are the questions people often forget to ask:

- What is the bathroom like? Roomy? Clean? Smelly?
- Is there a place to go for a walk? Can you walk around the block or is it industrial wasteland?
- Can you walk to a decent/cheap place to buy lunch and/or coffee?
- Is there an adequate lunch room with a microwave, fridge, running water and coffee machine?
- Are there other people who work near you? Are they attractive? Are they your age, or are they really old?
- Is it too cold or too warm? Does the heat work? Is the air condition too powerful?

5 Random Things I Hate (part 3)

Five more:

1) I hate when you're cooking bacon and the pieces are getting smaller and smaller because all the grease is running off. By the time they're done - the bacon strips are tiny, shriveled little things the size of your small toe. I hate that. You eat the two-bite pieces of pig fat and you're still starving! The bacon misled you!

2) I hate when people scribble their signature and make it unreadable. Why?? I need to know who you are. Why make your signature illegible? Are you in that much of a rush that you can't take a few extra seconds to neatly write your name? I hate you and your penmanship.

3) I hate it when you have grease stains on your pants (because you have a young child who causes all sorts of stains on your clothes), right near your groin, and it never dries because it's a grease stain, and so it looks like a wet spot - specifically like you wet your pants - and you're walking around all day with these wet pants and you're trying to block the view of the wet pants by hanging your arms down and sheltering your groin with your hands. I hate that.

4) I hate people who brush or floss their teeth in a public bathroom. It grosses me out. Various molecules of feces and urine are floating in the air, and these people are rubbing these molecules into their mouths with a toothbrush. Meanwhile, there are sounds of people farting and urine splattering against porcelain and people grunting while they move their bowels. How can you possible brush your teeth in this malodorous atmosphere? I hate you.

5) I hate that all movies cost the same. Shouldn't good movies cost more than crappy ones? Shouldn't new releases cost more than movies that are weeks/months old? It's called supply and demand people! If you want to get rid of the crowds and lineups at your theatre when the latest blockbuster opens, just raise the price. The theatres will be just as profitable (if not more) and won't have as many overhead costs (hiring extra staff etc.). Of course, concession sales might drop... I hate that this idea probably won't work!

Christmas lights are up.

On November 13 I first noticed Christmas lights in our neighbourhood. November 13! It's getting later and later every year. Usually the lights go up early November. The day after Halloween.

What's going on? Why are people becoming more humbug? Why don't people want to decorate?

I think it comes down to 2 reasons. 1) Laziness. People no longer want to put an effort into celebrating the holiday season. This is a shame. 2) Less holiday spirit. In the old days, people lit their houses up after Thanksgiving. And the lights were huge, extravagant, unbelievable.

Christmas is just not the big deal it used to be. The last few years, holiday shopping spending has been flat. I haven't even heard any Christmas carols on the radio. Usually this time of year one of the stations goes 24/7 Christmas. Nothing yet.

People it's mid November. Christmas will be here in the blink of an eye! We need to start celebrating and partying and buying gifts. We need to start standing in line and getting alcohol and calling restaurants to book our holiday party.

Things are changing. Christmas is fading away, and I don't like it one bit.

Jake took 8 steps.

Last Sunday Jake took at least 8 steps on his own. We were in the kitchen and he was playing with his music ball. I called him over and he just stood up and started walking.

This was the farthest he's gone. He's been able to do 2 or 3, no problem. He's reached 4 and 6 steps. But 8 is quite far.

His walking is a sort of back and forth gait. His legs don't move forward that much. They do a bit, but most of the motion is side to side. I've seen other little kids when they first learn to walk and he has that sort of gait.

If we're sitting, calling him over, he tends to walk carefully the first few steps then lose control and collapse into our arms for his reward hug.

If we get too excited, he gets too excited and seems to lose his focus on walking. It's best if he just sort of decides on his own and starts walking across the floor.

He keeps his arms outstretched while he walk, so that he can hold things or run his hand along the wall for balance.

We have to take his socks off or he'll slip on the floor. He walks in his bare feet. Sometimes his pants fall down and he slips on his pant legs.

When you write a blog you become self-obsessed.

One of the problems of writing a daily blog is that you have to think a lot about yourself. That sucks. We shouldn't think too much about ourselves. It can lead to depression.

I have a theory that the most depressed people you meet are the people who spend all day thinking about their problems. Or they spend hours analyzing themselves, evaluating their successes, comparing themselves to others.

Naval-gazing is a sure way to get sad. A little introspection isn't a bad thing. It's good to be somewhat self-aware, just don't overdo it.

That's a great thing about having an absorbing hobby, working hard in a career or having a child to take care of. You don't have a lot of time to self-obsess. You're too busy. You're in the "flow" of every day life and depression is distant and fuzzy.

When you have a blog, you have to think of things to write. You have to categorize and detail your opinions. You have to use examples from your life. All this requires thinking about oneself.

Have you ever tried this social experiment?

One day you realize that you're the only one who calls, invites, writes or initiates contact with someone. You've been a friends for years - but you've done all the work. All the organizing and inviting and planning.

You've just realized, "Hey that person never calls me."

You want to try an experiment. You want to see how long it will be before they contact you. So you stop all inviting, emailing, talking and communicating.

A couple days pass. You haven't' heard anything. No big deal. Only a couple days.

A couple weeks pass. Hey what's up??! What's wrong? Maybe you should contact them after all - something could have happened. Maybe they're very sick, dying, in the hospital. No, stay strong.

A couple months pass. You're angry now. Does your companionship mean nothing? NO WAY are you going to contact them again.

More time passes. You never hear from or see the person again.

"I don't want to get your hopes up..."

We recently had a community speech therapist come over to work with Jake. There had been a year waiting list.

She came over for an hour one day, then an hour the next day, doing an "evaluation" of his "communication".

When she was finished and we asked her how he was doing and when he might talk. She said, "I don't want to get your hopes up but someday he might make word approximations."

Trust me, you didn't get our hopes up.

Then she said she wanted us to enroll him in a program that would build a facilitated communication device - something with pictures he could show us that would tell us what he wanted.

We said, "We want him to talk." We declined her advice.

This is the song I want to write.

I want to write an awesome, epic song at least 6 minutes long. It's got to have a whole bunch of different parts - some slow, some fast, and the tempo has to change at least once.

It needs to have a great guitar riff - preferable acoustic, mixed with electric. The acoustic needs to be throughout the song as a driving rhythm, and the strings need to be slapped at every other beat like a snare drum.

The electric has to blend with the acoustic, at a higher octave so that it's sort of screamy. The riff will have a couple variations - a long variation and a short variation. The short one is a choppier, truncated version of the long one. It starts a certain way, moves in another direction, then ends in the same way it started.

Similarly, the song will be like this as well - a palindrome of itself.

The main melody will be different from the riff, yet they'll complement each other. Likewise, there will be a few different melodies but they will all sound similar. One melody will pop up expectantly, then give way to a different melody in a unpredictable pattern.

The chord progression will be a little strange - perhaps even a bit atonal at first. It will create a whole bunch of unresolved tension.

I'd like the song to be minimalist in terms of instrumentation. Only 3 instruments or fewer at a time, along with the vocals. The song needs to be dreamy like a lullaby, then swingy and jazzy and dancey, with elements of boogie blues within the riff.

The lyrics need to be nonsensical yet beautiful. Beautiful nonsense. I'd also like the song to have a couple false endings.

Things I was/should be afriad of.

I wrote in an earlier blog post that we all secretly want to be afraid and the media/government obliges us.

Today I got my swine flu shot (didn't hurt at all, but later felt like someone punched my shoulder). It's still all over the news - how the swine flu is going to kill us all because there are vaccine shortages.

I thought, "What diseases/sicknesses did the media try to make us afraid of in the 80s and 90s?"

Well, I'd say it was AIDS in the 1980s. When I was in elementary school everyone was going to die of AIDS. Guaranteed. Then AIDS faded away to "HIV", which became controllable by a cocktail of drugs.

Then in the 90s I had trouble remembering what I was afraid of. Of course I was in university, largely oblivious to world events. Too young to be worried about anything in particular.

Someone said it was Mad Cow disease. Or Ebola virus. Or the autism explosion. My co-worker said there were a whole bunch of food poisoning concerns in the 1990s. E-coli, etc.

Then in the 2000s it became a series of exotic flu diseases SARS, bird flu, swine flu.

What sickness is next? I want to know what I should fear.

Today is Remembrance Day

This is definitely the most solemn holiday. You're not really supposed to be happy on this day - which is tough because it's a free day off work. (It's a holiday in some parts of Canada, not in others.) How can you not be happy?

Actually Good Friday is also supposed to be a bummer. Jesus died. How can you be happy about that? The thing is a lot of people aren't religious so they're not too bummed out about Good Friday.

Remembrance Day on the other hand is just sad. All those people who died in wars. Suffered for us and our freedom. Sacrificed their lives.

It's always cold on Remembrance Day and raining or snowing. There's supposed to be a minute silence at 11am, but no one ever goes the full minute. It's more like a 30 second silence, and even then it's punctuated by that sad trumpet.

In school Remembrance Day was the day when you had an assembly and someone read Flanders Fields and an old war vet came and spoke about the war. I remember being proud of wearing my poppy, and often pricking my fingers on its pin.

One Remembrance Day I was in a really solemn mood. I decided I would write a poem about the sacrifice veterans made for us. A poem that would rival Flanders Fields. About 5 minutes in I realized my poem was horrible and I quickly aborted the idea. That was the day that I basically learned I'd never be a poet.

4 Jake stories.

1) Jake can stand on his tippy toes and can reach tables and counters now. This means if he sees a toy on a table or counter he will stand up and try to reach it. The problem is he can lose grip as he reaches and the toy can fall on his head. So we have to be careful. He also likes to close doors and drawers, but hasn't figured out that he can get his fingers caught.

2) Jake knows what a zipper is. He will touch his jacket zipper, but can't really pull it down or up. The jacket is too slack. He also understands when we ask him to take off his bib. He'll grab it from around his neck and try to pull it off. He doesn't realize you need to undo the velcro around the neck first. Finally, he tends to place his shoes and socks on top of his feet when you ask him to put them on. And he places the shoe and sock on top of the foot that's already in the shoe and sock. I say, "No Jake, you put it on the other foot."

3) Jake will now walk to where you ask him to go - if you're holding his hand (and apply gentle guiding when he gets distracted). For example, I can now say, "Jake let's go have dinner. Let's walk to your chair." I'll hold his hand and he'll stand up and walk over to his chair. Or I'll say, "Let's go see Mommy on the bed." Then I'll hold his hand as he walks down the hall to our bedroom. We have to keep the other doors closed, however, or he cold forget where he's going, get distracted and veer inside another room.

4) If you lie down on the floor on your back. Jake will crawl over, position himself behind your head, and then try to pull you up to a sitting position by your hair. He says "Up up up up!" over and over again as he does that, yanking on your hair. Apparently he doesn't like it when you lie down.

Talking on a cell phone while driving will soon be illegal.

The provincial government recently announced that talking on the cell phone or texting while driving will soon be illegal.

They announced it to great fanfare. People were happy. A few representatives from various community groups were standing beside the minister at the press conference, smiling and nodding their heads.

People phoned into the radio station and said it was a great idea because they've had lots of "close calls" or "near misses" with distracted drivers.

My first instinct as well is to support the move. No one likes people yapping on their cell phones while they drive.

But we also need to think about the role of government. Should the government be responsible for legislating good behaviour? Can you legislate good behaviour? Do laws make people moral? Is the government's role to take care of us? Do I want a portion of my taxes supporting these kinds of initiatives?

Where do we draw the line? If talking on a cell phone distracts drivers, then shouldn't it be illegal to talk to a passenger? Or fiddle with the radio?

We need to remember every law that is passed, no matter how benign, gives the government just a little more power over our lives. And, in this case, the government restricts our freedom just a little more as well.

PS: Isn't the expression "near miss" silly? Wouldn't it just be a "miss"? I would think a near miss would actually be a hit.

The void.

When life gets tough you can always say:

"Oh sweet void. Absorb me into your nothingness!"

It will happen one day. You'll die and all there will be is void. Forever. An infinite, blank, blackness stretching to infinity.

You will be wiped out. Your thoughts, memories, aches and pains, all obliterated into a vast emptiness.

I'm told the void is kind of like the way things were before you were born. What was it like for you thousands of years ago? It wasn't like anything.

Likewise, thousands, millions, billions of years from now it won't be like anything.

I'm told you shouldn't fear the void because fearing it would be like fearing the darkness between eye blinks. When the void happens, it's simultaneously instantaneous and infinite. The void immediately stretches an instant of blackness into infinity.

I'm told the void is like going to bed late at night when you're really tired. That moment just as you drift off to sleep. Only you never wake up.

In the car on the way home.

Yesterday afternoon, while driving home, I started thinking about driving. The light had begun to darken and rain started to splatter the windshield. There I was, travelling 100 kilometers an hour - a speed unheard and incomprehensible the vast majority of humans who have ever lived.

Sensors inside the car sensed it was dark and provided me with blueish light so I could lightly see the interior controls. The headlights had switched themselves on, creating a pool of bright yellow light making everything bright and clear. Mechanical wipers swished water out of my way, allowing me to see unobstructed.

The car blew warm, de-humidified air into the cabin, making me feel comfortable, despite the unfriendly elements of wind, rain and cold outside the car. I adjusted the fan so that it blew warm air onto my feet, which were a little cold.

I listened to a audiobook read by a professional narrator, created in a studio thousands of miles away. When I tired of this, I tuned the sound system to music - a reggae-type music from a CD I had borrowed from a massive catalogue of CDs held in our library.

My left show was off, and I rubbed my foot, massageingly, at red lights. I thought, "I'm in a bubble of comfort, surrounded by tons of steel and metal, hurtling me efficiently toward a destination."

Imagine what historical humans would have thought

I'm not rich. Not noble or Kingly or important in any major sense. I'm just a regular human. Look at this luxury I have. I was inside a tiny and comfortably enclosed, speeding home.

I can see how road rage happens. Someone crashes into you, hurts you, disturbs your peace. Hell yeah, you could easily become aggressive or offended. The car wraps around you and shields you from personal contact. Other vehicles are similar machines, driven by nameless, faceless people.

A computer can predict what I do.

This is perhaps the most frustrating game ever. It's called MindReader and the goal is to fool the computer by randomly pressing a 1 or 0. Meanwhile, the computer is trying to "read your mind" and predict whether you're going to press 0 or 1.

The first one to 100 wins. I've played 5 times and I haven't even been close to winning. In other words, the computer has successfully out-predicted me 5 times in a row - and by huge margins.

The computer uses math; specifically a "Context-Tree Weighting Method", which the programmers call "adequate". The computer uses math to read my mind and predict what I'm going to do next. Even when I try to be unpredictable, the computer still wins.

This scares and amazes me. It scares me because it shows that I'm not so unique after all. I can be predicted. It amazes me because this knowledge can be used to predict how people will react in certain situations. It takes the uncertainty out of behaviour.

The most interesting thing is that the computer predicts my next move even before I've consciously made it. The 2 or 3 seconds of my brain's reasoning is totally useless. I should just have a computer make all my decisions for me.

In the end, it will have chosen what I would have chosen most of the time anyway.

The best thing a father can do for his children...

The best thing a father can do for his children is love their mother. This is all you need to make your children happy.

If you can do this simple thing, than you will be a succesful father. If your children can see this, they will learn how to love in their own lives.

Their father's love for their mother is the measure of all future relationships. Their father's love for their mother is the strongest, purest, most important emotion they will learn from, and perhaps some day emulate.

Toys, movies, televsion, books - a child will gladly give these objects up to ensure growth in a loving family home.

If sports were played backwards...

The season would start with randomly placed standings and the teams would play the schedule, evening out all the wins and losses until the final game of the season, which would end in a 0-0 tie, with the team having a record of 0 wins, 0 losses and 0 ties.

The season would start with one team jumping around and cheering, then calming down and returning the championship trophy.

Players would go to the penalty box and after a few minutes the referee would blow the whistle and tell the players to leave the box. The best players would spend the whole game trying to take back their points, and the opposing team would spend the whole game trying to stop them.

Fans would come to the game excited and cheering, then as the game started, they'd calm down and relax until the game ended, when they'd stand up head to the concourse, buy a program, return their tickets to the box office and head back to the parking lot.

Coaches would start the game by shaking hands, then yell at their players, then calm down as the score decreased to 0 and then leave the playing field, ignoring everything except the game's strategies, which they think about in detail.

They'd think about the game for the next few days until the beginning of the next game.

The players would show up to practice, exhausted. Then, as they practiced, would gain more and more energy until practice ended, at which point they wouldn't feel tired at all.

The coaches would explain a complicated instruction and the team would practice the instruction well, but get worse and worse at it, the more they practiced; until eventually they couldn't perform it anymore.

Legendary athletes would return all their awards, come out of retirement, do amazingly well, then get worse and worse as they grew younger and younger. Slowly everyone would forget about them.

I think it would be cool to have an enemy.

I've always wanted an enemy. Someone dedicating his or her life to my demise. That would be so cool. To think, my life concerns someone so much that they're willing to put untold amount of time and effort into destroying me!

To have an enemy I would think you'd have to be an important, powerful person. I'm just not that important nor am I particularly powerful. Even if some other unimportant, un-powerful person decided to make me his or her enemy, I doubt it would last long.

There simply would not be enough emotion or motivation for us to be enemies.

Powerful people have enemies. Powerful organizations have enemies. And powerful concepts have opposites (enemies). I'm thinking good vs. evil or democracy vs. communism; or Bin Laden vs. the President; God vs. Satan.

By the way, you have to give Satan some credit for openly saying that God is his enemy! You can't have a more powerful enemy than God! And why would God tolerate Satan as an enemy? Shouldn't he just smite them with the snap of a finger?

God must want Satan as an enemy - similar to how I kind of want an enemy. It's an ego boost, I guess.

A good scam for getting spare change.

Today I came across a great scam for getting spare change from someone. There are quite a few scam artists in Vancouver who have evolved techniques to get money from people.

One guy goes around asking form a few dollars because he ran out of gas. Another woman pretends she's blind and asks for help at a crosswalk. Then she asks for money.

Today I was walking to my car in a paid parking lot. A guy passed me near the parking machine, cursing out loud. "Oh man I don't have enough!" he said loudly so I could hear.

Then he asked me, "Do you have a quarter?" He motioned toward the

Now normally I'd pony up. But for some reason I was suspicious of this guy. I said, "No" and kept walking. When I got in my car I watched him through the windshield.

He walked around the lot for awhile and then left. He didn't go back to his car, which makes me think that I was right. He doesn't have a car. He pretended to be short for parking. A great scam. It seemed so natural and a part of me wanted to help.

Oh well, I'm sure he'll find someone else to give him a quarter for his parking pass.

A can of soda costs $2.99.

How did we ever get to the point where a can of soda pop costs $2.99? I'm talking about those "energy drinks" - Rockstar, Redbull and the like.

Whoever came up with that marketing idea was brilliant.

"Hey, we're not making enough money selling carbonated water and sugar, so let's throw some caffeine and ginseng in there, and quadruple the price."

Brilliant! And even more so because young people buy energy drinks. They're cool. And marketers' prime demographic are males 18 to 35.

I've only drank one of those energy drinks in my life. Don't get me wrong, it tasted good. Great, even. Better than Coke or Pepsi or Dr. Pepper.

But excessive caffeine isn't good for your body. And excessive cost isn't good for your wallet. So I doubt I will drink them again. I'm just too old.

If I want an energy kick I'll spend $2.99 on a Starbucks coffee.

Here are some random observations about Halloween:

I always enjoyed Halloween when I was a kid. Then, for about 15 years it left my consciousness as I grew up and joined the real world.

Now it's back in my head. Why? Because I have a two year old, and because I live in a neighbourhood with hundreds of children.

Here are some observations about Halloween:

* I've run out of candy 2 years in a row. Too many kids. I shut the lights off, but they still knock on the door. So I run upstairs and hide, and try to be really quiet.

* I want to give only one candy. One gum ball or one chocolate bar, but Cindy says I should give two or three candies. I guess I'm cheap.

* Those mini chocolate bars that come out around Halloween are even smaller nowadays. They're more like mini-mini bars. Seriously, now they're the size of your knuckle. The wrapping weighs more than the chocolate.

* A truck crashed into the porch of a house two streets over from ours, knocking the supporting beam down. There's yellow crime-scene tape over the house. But if you just glance, it looks like all the other houses with yellow crime-scene tape decorated for Halloween.

* There's two types of Halloween decorations: Cute (smiling pumpkins, cartoony monsters) and scary (bloody masks, knives slitting throats). I prefer the scary stuff. Mostly in my neighbourhood it's the cute stuff.

* I think grown adults who dress up for Halloween are kind of weird. I don't mean putting on a witch's hat. That's fine. I mean those adults who go way overboard with a full-blown costume.

* In my last job I started on Halloween day. Half the office was dressed up on my first day of work. They walked me around the office to introduce me to everyone. The next day people weren't dressed up anymore, and they all looked unfamiliar.

Radical honesty.

I was reading The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment by AJ Jacobs. He writes a chapter about "radical honesty" a self-improvement technique invented by Dr. Brad Blanton.

The goal is to be completely, 100% honest all the time, in every circumstance. Not only that, but you're also not supposed to filter any thoughts that come to your mind. If you glance at a woman and find her attractive you're supposed to tell her, right then and there.

Hmm. Sounds disastrous. Jacobs attempted to follow radical honesty most of the time. He reported being stressed out. A few times he just couldn't do it.

Blanton says that lying to people is cruel. If grandma makes you cookies and they taste horrible, you should be kind and tell her they taste bad. If she gets offended, that's her issue. Umm okay.

How long would it take you to lose all your friends practicing radical honesty? How would you ever date the opposite sex or remain in a relationship? How would you ever get hired and/or keep a job?

I do grant that being radically honest at work would be simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying. You'd feel good for telling the truth. You'd feel great! But these "good feelings" would be overwhelmed by the sense of dread at being fired.

Clean up all the clutter!

I'm reading a book titled Throw Out Fifty Things: Clear the Clutter, Find Your Life by Gail Blanke. The idea here is that clutter makes you feel like crap. If you throw it out, you feel liberated. A pleasant side effect is that your mind also tends to clean itself up.

I'm totally into cleaning and throwing stuff out. Unfortunately, Cindy's the opposite. She's a bit of a pack rat. Last night I told her I got her a book from the library and I showed it to her. She read the title and laughed at me.

First, I'm amazed that the book is so long: 200 pages. I'm skimming it. Do I really need to read 200 pages of this? Sure, it's a good idea. But a whole book? There were 20 holds on it at the library and Amazon readers give it 4 stars. So apparently it's successful, and needed in the world.

(A side issue: I've noticed a lot of books centred around one, single, common-sensed idea. I don't think this is a great trend. Books should have tons of good and interesting ideas. But I suppose in this day and age of short attention spas, these are the kind of books demanded by consumers.)

Second, the "50 things" actually means "50 groups of things". In other words, you can't just throw out 50 CDs. That only counts as 1 thing.

Finally, I'm still amazed at how much stuff we have in our house. Specifically our basement. I can't believe that that stuff fit in our last (small) apartment in downtown Vancouver. I'm baffled.

This is my 100th post to the blog.

100 posts! And I haven't missed a day yet. I should celebrate with some kind of small, obscure personal event. Maybe when I'm driving I'llraise my arm out the window in a victory fist.

Or maybe I'll eat a forbidden and potentially dangerous, but extremely tasty piece of food.

There's a website that lists cool facts about each number. For 100 it says, "100 is the smallest square which is also the sum of 4 consecutive cubes." That doesn't sound very interesting to me.

I say 100 is a cool number because it's the first really big number you learn as a kid. Then, when you're an adult, 100 becomes a tiny, almost inconsequential number compared to some of the other numbers out there.

The biggest number in the world is a googplex, which looks like this:

10(10)(100) or Ten to the tenth power to the hundredth power. The number is so huge that there isn't enough room in the known universe to write out all the zeros. Also, the number could never be read or written because it would take more time than the age of the universe to read or write the number.

That's a big number.

But back to 100. One hundred is also cool because it's hundred times better or bigger than one. Meaning, if you just do one thing in your life, someone who does a hundred of these things is 100 times more experienced/wiser/better than you.

The self-help industry is a way to brain wash people.

A few days ago I wrote a blog post in which I proved that the self-help industry is useless. (Essentially I said if it worked, there wouldn't be any need for an industry.)

Yesterday I ordered Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America by Barbara Ehrenreich from the library. Apparently she argues that the "positive thinking movement" is a way that rich, wealthy, powerful people brainwash us.

I had never thought about it that way. If we're constantly told to stay positive and look at the bright side of things, then when we're let down or fired or abused or taken advantage of, we're not allowed to be upset.

It's the perfect scam! A corporation lays off all it's employees and says, "Don't worry, we're hiring a motivational speaker!"

The company says, "You have to stay positive! Things are going great for you! Look at the bright side!"

Positive thinking is hardly every questioned in our culture. It's just assumed that you should be doing it and you should be doing a lot of it.

If we are taught that "it's all in our mind, everything happens for a reason, you control your destiny, look on the bright side", we're taught to accept negativity and abuse.

Maybe people need to be pessimistic and angry. Maybe that will change things.

We want to be afraid of things.

You know how sometimes you want to go see a scary movie? You get in the safe theatre and eat your safe popcorn, and then you watch this terrifying movie? And even though it's terrifying it's also kind of fun and exciting?

That's how we want it to be all the time. We want to be scared, but safely scared. We want to be scared for other people. We want to be told what to do by experts to lessen our fear.

The media has realized this and tries to make us as scared as possible. The media tries to satisfy our needs. Newspapers or movies or TV shows or news shows that scare you are rewarded more through attention, ratings, gossip and ultimately money.

The government is happy! It knows that we want to be scared so they gladly oblige. They pass laws and spend our money to protect us. This gives them more power.

Corporations are happy to scare us as well. They can sell more products and services if we're scared.

So it's pluses all around. We want to be scared and we ask the media, government and business world to scare us. The media, government and corporations try their best to scare us and, in turn, benefit through more attention, power or money.

That's why today there are murderers everywhere, wars, impending natural disasters, pandemics, terrorists, rapists, corrupt governments and a million other things that will ruin our lives forever.

Two weird things I do at work.

1) I found this cup filled with pens, pencils, highlighters, a toothbrush (?), markers and a ruler. It's one of those old-fashioned, wood rulers from way back in elementary schools. I now carry this ruler around wherever I go at work.

I love holding it! It has just the right amount of weight and thickness. I often slap my palm with the ruler as I walk around. If I'm going to a meeting and I walk into the office, SLAP! If someone asks me a question and I need to think for a few moments, I use the ruler to rapidly slap my palm as I think. SLAP, SLAP, SLAP.

Occasionally I use the ruler for drawing straight lines. For example, I use a marker to scratch out entries into the computer program. I always used to free-draw the line and it looked horrible. Now, with my ruler, I draw a perfectly straight line.

2) I hike my pants up pretty high. So my waist is just under my belly button. Sometimes I tuck my shirt in as well. It looks awful, ridiculous. When I do this at home, Cindy lambastes me and rightly. The thing is, this look feels so naturally in an office. Hiking your pants up like a dweeb feels good. It feels right. The only problem is that it makes your ass look huge. Because the ass part of your pants is halfway up your back.

I haven't come across people who trust the swine flu vaccine.

When did we stop trusting vaccines?

I've only come across a few people who've said categorically that they're going to get the swine flu vaccine.

(Mind you, I haven't asked a lot of people - so this is very small sample. Still, with the eradication of small pox and other old fashioned diseases, you'd think people would WANT to get vaccinated from swine flu.)

Part of this distrust toward vaccines has been because of the faulty science of the purported link to autism.

People also say stuff like, "I never get sick and as soon as I got the flu shot, I caught the flu." They're suggesting that the flu shot either gave them the flu or made them more susceptible to the flu.

A few weeks back my Mom sent me an article that basically said the scientists developing the vaccine are bumbling idiots who have no idea what they're doing.

And you can read lots of articles that say things like, "The swine flu vaccine in the 1970s killed more people than the flu itself."

Okay, but how many people did it save?

No vaccine is 100% effective. And all vaccines carry risks. But - the benefits far, far outweigh the risks. Or so I'm told.

I don't know anyone who has smallpox.

There's a group of people in my organization trying to overthrow my boss.

My boss was upset yesterday when she got wind of a coup d'etat. Apparently there's a group of people in our organization plotting her demise.

Ho hum. What's new? I think in any large, controversial organization there is always a group of people planning a regime change. That's just life.

This is especially true when you organization loses funding, and its viability has become shaky. Even if it's not the boss's fault (which it's not), some people will still want heads to roll.

That's what happens when you're the top staffer at an organization. The benefits are lots of money and power. The risks are fast, ignoble firings.

I'm surprised she didn't see this coming. Or maybe she did and is simply feigning outrage to the board of directors to get them more involved in our plight. (To get them to care. Those bored, stoney-faced bastards. Good luck.)

I love drama at work. Makes things so exciting!

We've noticed that parents nowadays sleep with their young kids. Was this always the case?

I didn't think parents slept with their young children. Say - age 4 and under. But apparently lots of people we know - friends, co-workers, etc - sleep with their young kids.

I mentioned this to a slightly older co-worker and she said that about 50% of her contemporaries slept with their kids. She heard on the news the other day that 75% cases of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome occur when parents sleep with their children.

Of the people we know, A LOT of the kids who sleep with their parents have sleeping problems. They can't sleep on their own. One couple we know has a 6 month old in a sleep study. The kid can't sleep more than an hour a day.

Others can't sleep in their own bed, and can't stay asleep the whole night.

Jake has a bad habit of waking up early. 4am. He calls, "Mom?" a few times then goes back to sleep when we ignore him. Until 5:30am. At that point, he's up. We bring him in our bed and let him play for awhile before we get up.

When did parents start sleeping with their kids? I don't recall sleeping with my parents. Mom - did you sleep with kids? Did your contemporaries sleep with kids? I would think not.

I remember one time when Cindy was pregnant I saw a book in my mid-wife's office. It was called, "Why you should sleep with your kids" or something. It was written by some hippie-nazi, and looked to be published in the 80s or early 90s.

Jake had 4 women surrounding and praising him all day.

What a lucky guy. Yesterday he had 4 women praising him all day. Four women laughing at all his jokes and fawning at every single thing that he did.

Cindy said he loved it. Well, yeah!

He had 1) the feeding therapist 2) her assistant 3) his daycare worker and 4) his mom. Imagine getting that much attention from women!

Mind you, 3 of them were being paid - but that means nothing to Jake. All he knew was that these women were at his beck and call, and they satisfied his every whim.

He makes a sound and suddenly, "Good boy! Great talking." He takes a bite of food. "Excellent eating! You're amazing!"

Imagine what that could do to your ego? Luckily, he's only 2 so he doesn't have much of an ego yet. Sadly, he'll probably forget the specifics of this day. Which is too bad. It would be nice to remember days like this when you're older. As a guy, I can tell you they don't happen often. You rarely get 4 women praising your every move unless you're a handsome male celebrity, and even in these cases, half the women are stalkers.

So Jake, I hope you enjoyed your day. Don't expect that when you get older. However, I intend to remind you of this day throughout the years.

I have a theory that anything "self-help" doesn't really work.

If self-help really worked, then there would NOT be an industry of books, videos, techniques and websites.

You would read one or two self-help books and voila, you'd be improved. No more need for self-help. The self-help gurus like Tony Robbins or Dr. Phil would only have one book published. One system. The book stores wouldn't have a self-help shelf. And so on.

Of course that's not the case. Robbins and the other self-help gurus have a plethora of books and systems and seminars and followers. That just proves to me that self-help doesn't work.

Besides, we all know what we need to do to improve things right? Deep down we know the answers? I think so. We all know what we should do. Most of us just don't bother doing these things - because they're too hard.

A real self-help program wouldn't be about telling us what we need to do. It would be about making us actually do them, actually complete the tasks. And since we can't be forced to do anything we don't want to, self-help fails.

My boss says I use email too much.

A few days ago my boss called me the "king of email". She often tells me that I use email too much, and says that I need to phone more.

About a week after I first started she came in my office and told me she doesn't like getting a lot of email. I took the hint and stopped emailing her every little thing.

A month after that she called me in my office and told me to stop using email so much. I said ok.

Then a few weeks ago I got this email from saying something like: "Please call people on the phone."

She's a Luddite but, to be fair, I do use email an awful lot. I like it because it leaves a record of all communications. In this job things sometimes come back to bite you and I want a written record of things I said and did.

I also use my email program (Outlook) as a task manager and to do list. It's the way I keep organized. So I often turn emails into tasks that I must complete by a certain date.

I deal with teachers a lot so calling them during the day doesn't work. They're teaching class. Emailing is more convenient.

Mostly I use email so I can avoid talking to people on the phone. I don't like the phone very much.

At what age do you realize you were wrong about life?

When you're a kid you think that when you grow up you'll be special. Maybe you'll be rich or famous or powerful. An astronaut, scientist, explorer, inventor. You'll do something unique, be remembered forever, work hard and succeed at something.

Then, as you get older, you realize that in fact you're not special. You're pretty mediocre. There are millions of people like you. There are millions of people better than you.

You have accomplished very little, don't have much money, you are physically past your prime. At what age do you finally realize you will never become the adult that you dreamed about as a child?

I say 30. In your teens, you're still very young and naive. You still think you're special, and you haven't started college or lived on your own in the real world.

In your 20s, you start to get an inkling that maybe you won't be a smashing success after all. But you're still hopeful! Maybe you'll catch that break! Maybe something's going to change.

By the time you hit 30 it's sunk in. Sorry, you ain't special. You still have a small chance, perhaps, but probably will never be the roaring success you thought. You're running on the treadmill faster and faster, just to maintain.

This could lead to depression (mid-life crisis in 30s or 40s). Hopefully you will simply accept it and move on. Try your best at the few things you're good at. Or maybe you'll be motivated to try even harder and become the success you dreamed.

Who knows?

Jake sits forward now in the car.

When you have a kid you start noticing small milestones of growth. The latest one for Jake was that we turned his car seat around. Now he faces forward like a big boy!

When we first put him in the car seat, he looked around, confused. He knew something was different and was pretty excited about facing forward.

We started driving and a huge smile broke out over his face. He could now see out the windows, and he could see Dad and Mom in the rear view mirror. I enjoyed watching him in the rear view mirror as I drove.

When I reach behind me I can grab his foot and give his leg a shake. He also leans forward against the straps because he wants to see better. He hasn't figured out that he can lean back and still see the same amount.

What's wrong with liberals.

A couple days ago I wrote about what was wrong with conservatives. Now I'll return the favour for liberals. So what's wrong with them?

- They push their own "morality" on society. (Political correctness, forced green initiatives, etc.)

- They meddle too much with the economy.

- They pursue a political strategy of appeasement with enemies and aggressive nations.

- They have a sense of entitlement (I should be provided free medical care, welfare, employment insurance, benefits)

In short, they're typically young and naive. They don't understand the world very well and they think that the government can solve all their problems. Most annoyingly, they think the government can "pay" for everything.

Guess where the government gets its money from? You and me. One more question: is the government good at doing things? Are government bureucrats successful in their various efforts? No, of course not.

Oh you liberals!