Always read the label.

Here is the label on one side of a box of cookies we bought for Jake:

Advancing Nutrition is Beech-Nut's pledge to provide nutritious food choices for your toddler. Let's Grow! products are made from natural and essential nutrients of the highest standards.

Here is what the other side says:

% Daily Value

Vitamin A 0%

Vitamin C 0%

Calcium 0%

Iron 0%

Child prodigies don't turn out to be geniuses.

Apparently if your child is a prodigy, you shouldn't have high expectations for when they're an adult.

According to a book I'm reading called The genius in all of us : why everything you've been told about genetics, talent and IQ is wrong by David Shenk, there is no association between child prodigies and adult geniuses.

The author says the child prodigies DO turn out to be more successful than average - but almost all of them fail to make a comparable mark in the adult world.

"As a rule, child prodigies are not adult-level innovators but masters of technical skill; their spellbinding quality comes of of natural comparison with other children's skills, not because they truly compare to the best adult performers in their field." p51

He says that child prodigies and adult geniuses have different skills. A child prodigy typically masters technical skill - think of a 5 year old violinist. While an adult genius, develops some unique or creative way of thinking.

***

As a side note, he said that many young children today are as gifted as Wolfgang Amadeus was on the violin. Today, it's less exceptional because we know that a huge part of talent can be harnessed through the environment. We half expect there to be lots of young, talented violinists.

In Mozart's day, this was less understood.

My experience with Chinese food.

We ordered Chinese the other night and I thought I'd write about my experience. I haven't had Chinese food in ages. It reminds me of when I was a kid - our family would often go for Chinese food.

When we ordered they guy spoke broken English and he got part of our order wrong. Oh well. That's par for the course. It's expected.

Guess what? Chinese food tastes the same as when I was a kid. There has been no progress in Chinese food over the last 20 years. It's kind of like the Big Mac. The same wherever you go.

We got a lot of food for $30. 5 meals worth to be exact. I wonder how they stay in business? Food is expensive in BC. Where do they buy their food so that they can feed you 5 meals for $30?

The old joke with Chinese food is that you can stuff yourself and 30 minutes later you'll be hungry. I stuffed myself and it actually took 62 minutes before I felt hungry again.

They sent us 3 fortune cookies with forgettable positive fortunes. Jake was distrustful of his cookie and wouldn't try it, even though we told him it was a cookie. He enjoyed watching us break our cookies open, however.

We ordered 4 or 5 courses, but they all kind of blended together on my plate so that I didn't really know what I was eating by the end. So even the different dishes of Chinese food taste about the same.

We ended up throwing out a lot of it after the second day and 5th meal. By that point it no longer looked appetizing, and our palates were sick of it.

That is my 2010 Chinese food experience.

Jake gets too excited for bed time stories now.

We realized a couple nights ago that Jake gets too excited when we read a bedtime book. It actually wakes him up.

For bedtime, we want him to be drowsy, not alert. So we've had to cut out the bed time books. (He does get plenty of books during the day.)

Instead, we let him watch a signing dvd on the computer. He doesn't blink much and the tears run down his face.

It puts him in a daze and he goes to bed easier - plus he learns some signs.

Act your age!

There are a few things you can you say guaranteed to make people mad. One of them is "Relax!" or "Calm down!" Another one is "Act your age!".

Speaking of this, I'm flipped through How not to act old : 185 ways to pass for phat, sick, hot, dope, awesome, or at least not totally lame by Pamela Redmond Satran.

The book is mildly interesting for about 5 seconds. It might make a good gag gift for someone's birthday if you want to tease them about age.

But reading a whole book about the topic? Pages and pages about it? Naw. It might be worth a 300 word article in a magazine. A whole goddamn book??

I do agree with one part. It says "Don't act like the mommy" at work. In other words, don't buy donuts for people or buy birthday cards or organize good bye lunches. Don't do any of that crap.

It's what old people do. Don't nanny.

Now for my opinion: When you do things like this at work it also lowers everyone's professional opinion of you. I'd say you lower your chances of getting a promotion if you're always cleaning people's dishes in the kitchen or working on a social committee.

Why? Because leaders never work on the social committee. They never buy cards for anyone or order birthday cakes. They don't care. They're leaders. That work is for the receptionists or the HR people.

Things you should do.

I enjoyed Richard Wiseman's new book 59 Seconds: Think a Little Change A Lot.

He looks at a whole bunch of psychological studies and lets us know the results. Then he summarizes what we should do to improve our lives, based on actual science.

This approach is in sharp contrast to 99% of self help books, which don't do any of this. Instead, their authors say what they think, and base their opinions on personal experience.

Anyway, from memory, this is what the book (and science) says you should do:

- Have a plant at your desk at work

- Do a puzzle to distract your conscious mind before you make a complicated decision

- To get over being mad at someone, don't get worked up by punching a punching bag. Instead, write down the ways in which you have learned from the experience.

- To be happier, write down the things you're grateful for. Do a small act of kindness.

- To lose weight, keep track of the calories you consume and how much you burn by doing basic exercises. Hang a mirror in your kitchen and use smaller bowls and utensils. Start off eating at a normal pace, but slow down as the meal progresses.

- To have a better marriage, every once and awhile write out why you're lucky to have your spouse.

- Don't visualize success, visualize practicing.

- Dogs are better than cats at lowering stress.

- To get someone to say yes, lightly touch their arm.

- Phrase something in a unique way to get a more positive response. E.g instead of saying "It costs $3." Say, "It costs 300 pennies."

- Servers who repeat your order back to you get more tips than those who say "Coming right up!" or a similar phrase.

- In job interviews try to say the negative stuff about yourself at the beginning of the interview.

These suggestions are all backed up by scientific evidence and references listed at the end of the book.

A few good quotes I came across.

There are dictionaries filled with quotations from famous personalities. I will never be in one. Even if I were famous, I'm just not that quotable.

I read The Prophet by Kahil Gibran and came across some outstanding quotes:

Your daily life is your temple and your religion.

For what is to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked, And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.

Child prodigies dpm

How do I relate-socially with someone who's 19?

I have another phone interview today. The woman sounds very very young. Early 20s is my guess. Maybe even 19.

I wrote in an earlier posting that I've decided to treat phone interview more like social chats. Most phone interviews are more like elimination interviews. A sure way to be eliminated is to start stiffly talking about how qualified you are for the job.

"What a loser," the interviewer would think. "Why would I want to hire a cold dude that only talks about his work?"

But if you're social during a telephone interview, the person will say, "Hey, he's pretty cool. Plus his resume shows he's qualified. Let's call him in and see in person."

This technique has worked for me 100% of the time! (1 for 1).

Now the problem is, because she's so young, how do I relate? I've never spoken socially to a young person before.

I have no idea what young adults talk about from ages 18 until about 25. How do I sound cool and hip, without coming off as trying to hard?

I need to think of some great stories to tell.

Jake poured water down his shirt and pants.

This morning at breakfast I gave Jake a cup of water. I filled it with too much water though and when Jake drank, he dumped it down his shirt and pants.

He did this two or three times. A bit of water went in his mouth but he choked on it because he's more used to the sippy cup.

I went upstairs and got a new shirt for him so he wouldn't be cold for the rest of breakfast. After breakfast Cindy had to change his pants and diaper.

Today is my one year anniversary at my current job.

I have now been working here for one full year.

It's been neither good nor bad. I'm treated decently and the work is dull.

I haven't learned anything, nor increased my skills in any major area. Nothing really bad has happened and nothing really good.

The best thing that happened was that we moved closer to my house. The worst thing that happened was we lost a couple employees so I had to do more administrative work.

I'm not upset at all that I'll be leaving this job shortly. Nor would I be upset if I had to stay another 6 months or until I found something better.

The job is entirely neutral - neither good or bad - like an Arrowroot cookie.

Stop talking about it and do it.

I've noticed lately that I've talked a lot about cleaning the house and doing taxes. I've told Cindy probably 5 times that I was going to work on taxes. I started telling her this back in late February.

It's April and I still haven't started. Why not?

Yesterday I read a blog post about how people who announce their intentions are less likely to make them happen.*

I agree. This advice does fly in the face of self-help authors who suggest that you should announce your plans to everyone you know. Supposedly by doing this you obligate yourself to actually competing your projects.

But, in actuality, the theory says by announcing your plans you're tricking your brain into thinking that you've already taken the first step. You get a tiny sense of accomplishment. Therefore you have no motivation to actually complete them.

So keep your plans quiet. Instead of spending energy announcing the plans, just do them.

___

* Reference: “Symbolic Self-Completion” (1982) by Peter Gollwitzer

A mini-confession.

I'd like to make a small, unimportant confession.

Whenever I hear the "David Suzuki Report" on the radio, I turn the station. It starts off with David Suzuki saying something like, "Here's another small thing change we can make for this planet that we all depend upon."

Then he suggests making a change to reduce consumption or waste or help the environment. I'm sorry but I don't want to hear it. It bores me.

I know this is bad. I should want to help the planet that we all depend upon. I should want to do these things.

I don't. Then I feel guilty for not wanting to listen to this very important public announcement.

Maybe it's because David Suzuki yelled at my wife when she was a little girl because she was too loud on his television set. Perhaps I'm holding some resentment toward him.

Will this ever happen at work?

ROWE stands for "Results Only Working Environment". It seems like every time I read a business book I hear about a successful, forward-thinking company who has abolished all meetings, attendance and schedules.

Employees can show up whenever they want and leave when ever they want. As long as they get the work done. "Results-only".

This sounds too good to be true. But the business books proclaim that this new management style makes companies more efficient, stronger, happier and their employees love it.

I'm sure they do - if it exists. I'm skeptical. First, I don't think many companies can go this route. They need schedules and meetings and managers and timetables. Most of these kind of companies profiled in business books are software development companies.

Second, the vast vast majority of managers or leaders or executives within a company believe in top-down management. They don't want their employees to have free will. They themselves worked their way up the ranks and are successful in the top-down system.

They're not going to suddenly say, "You know, as a leader, I'm not really needed even though I worked my way up into this position for 15 years. I'll let my employees have all the power."

Third, if ROWE makes companies so much more successful, why aren't all companies doing it?

Sorry, it won't happen. I'll mark this down as "a nice-sounding but totally impractical idea."

A new syndrome.

There's a new syndrome out there. Tiger Woods' Syndrome. I saw a book about it in the grocery store.

The book is called The Tiger Woods Syndrome - Why Men Prowl and How to Not Become the Prey.

The book seems to be geared toward women, who don't suffer from the syndrome. I would think the book should help the people who suffer from this syndrome.

The description says that this syndrome is an "epidemic sweeping the nation". That's very scary.

Is it contagious? Is there medication? Treatment?

The description goes on to say that this is the "beginning of an awakening of America".

Yes it is. I had not heard about this epidemic (soon to be pandemic?) sweeping the nation until I had seen this book in the grocery store.

As a man, I'm at high risk. That's not good at all. Just another thing to worry about.

When motivation goes wrong.

Common practice often lags behind social science. Motivation is the perfect example. We think that we can motivate people by offering rewards like money or coupons or benefits.

This does work, but only for dull, repetitive tasks.

For the important tasks, you can actually decrease motivation by offering money. I'm reading Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink.

He cites an experiment with school-grade children who liked to draw. The experimenters measured how much time children spent drawing.

Then they offered the children certificates and other prizes for drawing. The children started drawing less.

Versions of this experiment have been replicated over and over again. Not only does offering if-then rewards fail to motivate people, if also stifles creativity.

Adults who were paid to solve a puzzle took longer than those who weren't.

The theory is that by offering money for something that people already enjoy we cause them to think of the task as "work". They lose pleasure in the task. When the children were bribed to draw, they felt like they were losing their freedom to enjoy something they already loved.

I watch other babies.

As the days get closer to the birth of my second child, I find myself watching other little babies. Just today I was watching a mother carry around her son at the library.

Yesterday I was watching a baby in a stroller.

I'm trying to remember what it's like to have a newborn. If I remember correctly, it's pretty easy. They don't do much except look around and sleep.

The hardest part is changing their diaper (which is pretty easy because their poop doesn't get bad until they start eating sold foods) and not sleeping at night (which is hard because you're so tired all the time).

Other than that, it's not too tough for the Dad. For the Mom feeding adds a whole new dimension of difficulty. I don't envy women.

I always feel a little creepy when I watch kids. Men are villanized as molesters so I get self-conscious about watching kids. Because I'm self conscious, I sort of secretly watch them, which I'm sure makes me look even creepier. Then, because I feel even creepier, I start to feel ashamed of myself.

The arrow of time.

Yesterday's post about time was both confusing and fascinating. Here's another fascinating thing about time: it only moves in one direction.

The arrow of time points toward entropy. Things tend to get more disorganized. That's why scrambled eggs don't seem to reassemble themselves or divers jump out of the water and land on the side of the pool completely dry.

But why does time's arrow point in one direction? I don't know. You can argue that it needs to point this way in order for there to be a cause-and-effect relationship between events and things.

Yet I heard that from a purely mathematical angle, it doesn't matter which way time flows. Physicists' calculations work both forwards and backwards.

There may be other parts of the universe where time flows backwards. Or perhaps in the vast multi-verse, there are universes that exist in which time flows backwards. We just can't see them.

I think it would be cool if, at the end of the universe, time reversed itself and ran backward until the big bang again. Then our bodies would reform and be resurrected and we'd live until we got smaller and smaller and eventually disappeared inside our mother's bellies.

What is time?

Time is the duration between events.

An interesting question is why is there a duration between events? Why doesn't everything happen at once?

If everything happened at once then the universe would be created, evolve and die out all at the same time.

That seems impossible. Chemical reactions take time. Eating takes time. Moving takes time.

On the other hand, thanks to Einstein, we know that time itself is relative. The faster something travels, the less time it experiences compared to something else travelling slowly.

So if you travelled at the speed of light, everything around you would appear to happen all at once. You wouldn't see any duration between events. People would be born, live and die in the same instant.

Interestingly, to them you would appear ageless and unchanging.

The more I think about time the more my brain starts to hurt.

The right way and the wrong way.

Jake's caregiver told Cindy that her husband doesn't have patience with her own 2 year old son. She said men don't have the patience to deal with small children.

She also told Cindy that she can't stand when her husband does things to help out with the kid because "he does them wrong".

I said to Cindy, "Oh man what a typical woman! It's her way or the highway!"

Cindy said, "I'm not like that."

I said, "No, you're not too bad. But you do want it done your way."

She said, "No, I want it done the right way."

I said, "Yeah, which is your way."

She didn't have much of a response to that.

Postscript:

When I told Cindy I was going to put this conversation on my blog, and recounted the conversation, she said, "That's not exactly how it went."

I said, "Sure it is. It's my blog so it can go the way I want it to go. When you set up your own blog you can write your version of the conversation."

Life doesn't wait for you.

I've always heard that life doesn't wait for you. It passes you by.

This isn't the case for my sister, who has been travelling in South America since the Fall. Apparently now her old apartment and her job are waiting for her when she returns in the next month.

I guess this is a good thing. You have something to come home to. But it's also a bit depressing. I was told that life goes on without you. Whenever you "come back" things are different.

That won't be the case for my returning sister. The same job and the same apartment.

It seems to me that whenever you're back, you should face a new situation. A new life. You could start over again and that's refreshing.

But returning to the same old has to be a bit of a downer. Within days, it will be like you never left. Your 6 month life journey will be reduced to a week's vacation.

That kind of sucks.

On the plus side, you don't have to worry. Things are in a holding pattern, and that can be comforting. It's all a matter of perspective I suppose.

Double strollers are beasts.

We went looking for double strollers last weekend. We're definitely going to need one. Jake can walk pretty well now, but he often asks "up" every 5 minutes or so because he gets tired out.

Double strollers are huge and heavy. They won't fit in our regular car. They barely fit in the minivan. Pushing the thing around is like driving a truck.

When you buy one, you need to take into account your baby car seat. Does it fit in the stroller? You should hope so or you have to buy another baby car seat.

***

Other boring stuff about strollers:

We went to three stores. Walmart, The Bay and Sears. Walmart only had one stroller, chained up to you couldn't even roll it. Plus it seemed crappy.

The Bay had a good stroller that we wanted, but it was cheaper at Sears.

So now we'll just wait for a sale.

I had a job interview 2 days ago.

It went pretty well. I had read in Richard Wiseman's new book, 59 Seconds, that the scientific studies about job interviews shows they're not really about qualifications. It's about social comfort.

If you ingratiate yourself to the interviewer you have a good chance of getting the job. So I tried a new strategy. Think of the interview as 25% social. I had a couple of social stories rehearsed - one about driving, one about hay fever and one about coffee.

I used 2 out of 3.

Turns out the manager was also a laid-back, social guy who said, "I'm not into the whole job interview thing." Our interview was basically like a conversation between two people. He was on "holiday mode" because, well, he was on holidays.

He had come in to work just for the interviews. He said he was interviewing 3 candidates, one internal. That worried me a little - an internal candidate. But he said she annoyed him with an email so I might be okay.

A guy remembered someone from his pre-natal class.

Yesterday at work the delivery man said to one of the teachers, "Gord?? Is that you??"

"It's me - Mike! From our pre-natal class!"

Not that surprising a conversation - until I tell you that their prenatal class was 22 years ago. He remembered him from 20 plus years ago!

In our prenatal class with Jake we didn't stay in touch nor make friends with any parents. Of course, Jake was too sick so we missed our reunion.

Also we were a shy group and none of the parents really talked to each other much.

I do remember a few people from the class. Most notably a couple named Tim and Robyn, who were sort of like the class clowns.

They were the ones who made jokes throughout the class. The cool kids.

Cindy and I began calling our prenatal class the "Tim and Robyn show" because the class would be all about Tim and Robyn and their challenges of pregnancy.

So I suppose I will remember them for awhile - maybe even 20 years. Certainly if I bumped into them I doubt I would recall their faces though.

This time around we're not doing a pre-natal class. No point. We are doing a hospital tour, however, and it costs $25.

It's also an hour and a half. Why does it need to be so long? Maybe that takes into account bathroom breaks and slow waddling? Maybe the actual tour is only 10 minutes.

Jesus has brothers and sisters.

Lots of people don't know that Jesus had siblings. He's the oldest child, and his younger brother, James, headed up the Jerusalem church for awhile after Jesus's death.

At least, that's what I'm learning from reading The brother of Jesus and the lost teachings of Christianity by Jeffrey J. Bütz.

The author says that many religions say that Jesus did NOT have brothers and sisters. Like Catholicism. They say he only had "cousins". Other religions say that his brothers and sisters were actually step-brothers and sisters (from his father's other wife).

Traditional Christian doctrine shows Paul as the next leader of the Christian church after Jesus's death.

But this book argues it may actually have been James, and that James's story is more interesting because it's not well known and may even be repressed by the Church.

I just started the book so that's all I know so far.

Easter isn't a big deal.

From the ages of about 10 to 30 Easter isn't a big deal. Then you have kids or get married and Easter becomes more of a big deal.

It's the lost holiday. The holiday that disappears and them emerges later in life.

When you're a kid you care about easter because it means Easter Bunny and candy. When you're an adult you care only about the long weekend.

I suppose too if you're religious you would care about easter. I'm not religious.

Cindy tells me that you can send easter cards out to people nowadays. Last week she saw a huge lineup in the mall to sit on the Easter bunny's lap.

Don't remember that when I was a kid. Sit on the easter bunny's lap?

How to never get fired.

I'm skimming Linchpin by Seth Godin.

The book's about how to make yourself indispensable to your employer, thus guaranteeing employment. It's important to do this in today's economy you know.

He talks about how traditionally employers wanted compliant, robotic employees. This creates a problem for us middle class employees. We're replaceable because we're so robotic.

Also, our wages don't increase much because why would they? There's always a huge pool of robotic workers who can pretty much replace us at any time.

He argues that ABC (Attendance Based Compensation) is dead. You just can't expect to show up to work and get paid anymore.

I skimmed the first few chapters and then stopped reading. No point to continue really, as it seemed like common sense. Don't know why it needed to be a huge book. A few paragraphs would have done just fine.

Food items should be named by their first two ingrediants.

One of my best ideas when it comes to food labelling is to abolish food brand names. No more cheerios or Coke or Mars bars. Get rid of the brand name.

Instead, we refer to the food item by its first two (sometimes three ingredients).

For example, Coke would be re-named, "Carbonated water sugar drink". Corn Pops cereal would be called "Corn meal and sugar cereal". Aunt Jemima's maple syrup would be called "Glucose sugar and water syrup".

In fact, pretty much every packaged food would be called something sugar. Sugar is almost always in the top three food ingredients.

Real foods - like all natural peanut butter would actually be called "Peanut butter". Milk would be called milk and eggs would be called eggs.

The benefits of my idea is that it will give us more awareness of what foods we are actually consuming. When we see that our frozen blueberry waffles are actually called "wheat and corn meal waffles", we'll be less likely to consume them.

Why it's hard to find a job here.

Well I had another phone elimination interview last week. I hate these pre-phone interviews where they ask you questions in hopes that they can eliminate you from their short list.

I wrote another blog entry about the challenge of a phone interview - how to keep my voice positive and upbeat when I sound naturally depressed and monotone.

I sensed I did okay in this phone interview. Hopefully he'll call me in for a real interview this week.

Anyway, a few people have asked me how the job market was here. I don't really know at this point. My impression is that there are jobs here, but they're hard to get because of a hugely qualified pool of workers.

In other words, when you apply for jobs your biggest obstacle are the hundreds of resumes from people who are very highly qualified.

It's an employers' market, and they have the best of the best lining up to work for them. That's why it's hard to get a good job.

(At least this is what I tell myself whenever I get rejected for a new job.)

Tattoos are ugly.

I don't like tattoos. I think they're ugly and that people look better without them.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind tattoo art. There are some amazing tattoo artists. I just don't like markings on the skin.

I realize I sound old- fashioned. I'm about 10 years older than when tattoos became acceptable - especially for young women. The Brittany Spears of the world.

Now I think at least half of women under the age of 35 have tattoos.

When you're young, you want a tattoo because they're cool. You don't think about how the tattoo is going to look on your loose, wrinkled skin when you're 50 years old.

I believe people generally don't like the decisions their younger selves made. Tattoos are the perfect example. Your younger self makes a short-sighted, dumb decision that your body has to live with its whole life.