A boy and a dog

The difficulty of purging toys

My friend over at Confessions of a Hoarder talks about her difficulty decluttering kids' toys.

I have a hard, hard time dealing with toys, too.

I have been able to purge just about every group of things I call "mine": my hair, my computers, my motorcycles, my tools, my clothes, my books.

Once my wife got the bug, she started purging her stuff, too. That has been going well, and we work on it together.

One of the reasons I find toys difficult is that I'm making the decision for someone else. I know that, by getting rid of 1/2 of my books, I lose something (the opportunity to read that book at a moment's notice, the status symbol of books that define "me" to visitors) and gain something in return (space on the shelf, ease of managing my stuff, order in my home, money that I don't have to spend on more storage). I can decide if that trade-off is the right choice for me.

However, with the kids toys, I know that most of the gain is the parents' (for it is our feet that hurt when we step on a marble; we are the ones that separate the blocks, trains, wedgits, and legos) and most of the loss is kids' (they don't have access to a toy that they might enjoy).

What I remind myself of is how much the kids gain, too:

- Their parents are slightly less cranky.

- Their parents have more free time to spend with the kids, to cook nutritious meals, to take care of themselves so they can take care of the kids.

- Kids, too, like a clear, open space to engage in play.

- Clear, open spaces are particularly good for wrestling with Dad.

- Being able to clearly see a small number of toys works better than being surrounded by a plethora. It gives kids a chance to really focus their play in one area, and to not be overwhelmed when considering what play to do next.

- Kids play with non-toy things as often as toy things. Wooden spoons and sofa cushions are current favorites. Those items serve double-duty (yes, you can stir with a wooden spoon), thereby increasing their "density" in the home.

I've noticed recently that even the babies (16 months on Saturday) will often not think of playing with something until someone points it out to them. So, providing them with bucket upon bucket of toys won't really help them find fun. Having just 1 toy can meet their needs, if there's someone to help them get engaged.

In January I put a bunch of kids' toys in storage. It was a really good choice -- the kids haven't missed the toys, and life has been a bit easier since.

Date Night

As parents of 3 small children, it's rare that Julie & I get to spend time together, just the two of us. Luckily for us, we found someone who was willing to babysit all 3, and we went out on a date.

We went for sushi.

As you can see, this is a happy thing.

How little do we really need?

Reading http://confessionsofahoarder.blogspot.com/2007/04/off-topic-guest-post-over-at-happy-jet.html got me thinking.

Every Thanksgiving my extended family rents a large house at the beach. There are usually about 16 people there, of which I contribute 5. For those 5, we only bring 2 suitcases, 2 backpacks, and carseats. There are only a few toys, unlike the hundreds of overflowing toys at home.

There are clearly some things missing, like clothes for the other weather, but still, we do very well with very little.

One important factor is the help we get. For example, with other adults around, we have time to keep up on laundry, washing every day, so we only need 3 days worth of clothes.

It's something we think about often when working on decluttering and pondering how much we really need for our happiness.

-Jay on a Pocket PC phone

This just seen

It fills my heart with corporate pride.

-Jay on a Pocket PC phone

Board games on the computer

It's nice to sit down at a table to play a board game. You get some real human interaction that is missing from, say, television. But when it's time for dinner, you have to end the game. Or the peices get distributed -- under the sofa, behind the dresser, into a baby's digestive tract.

These problems go away when you play on a PC. No losing virtual chess peices. Go works well on the computer, too. Dominoes doesn't as well, since you can't hide your peices from your opponent, but having two PCs can do the trick.

But I'm still trying to figure how to get an online version of Twister.

How dumb do phishers think I am?

I just got a mail with this contents:

Dear Customer, jbasuki.

You are receiving this message, due to you protection, Our Online Technical Security Service Foreign IP Spy recently detected that your online account was recently logged on from am 88.30.167.175 without am International Access Code (I.A.C) and from an unregistered computer, which was not verified by the Our Online Service Department.

If you last logged in you online account on Thursday April 5th 2007, by the time 6:45 pm from an Foreign Ip their is no need for you to panic, but if you did log in your account on the above Date and Time, kindly take 2-3 minute of your online
banking experince to verify and register your computer now to avoid identity
theft, your protection is our future medal.


Verification Link
(removed)

Notice: You can acess your account from a foreign IP or
country by getting am (I.A.C) International Access Code, by contacting our local
brances close to you.

Do people really fall for such badd speling and gramer?

Twins spin me around

My first youtube upload. The camera was upside-down, and I don't know how to flip the video. *sigh*.

Plant walk

On Sunday Reid & I went on a plant walk in Discovery Park. It turned out we were the only people who showed (besides the leader).


I met a lot of plants that I hope to meet again, including Stinging nettle, Plantain, and Horsetail. I'm pretty sure I've seen plantain around my neighboorhood; I am looking forward to finding it & adding it to my local snacking menu, which currently includes chickweed, dandelion, and blackberries.


I'd like to find something close to home that will make a tasty tea.

At the right is a snap of horsetail that I took.

mead bottling

When we drank mead in December, we decided that making a lot more was a good idea.

Bottling underway

Rinsing the bottles (so they're not sticky)

A full complement

A change in drinkware

The babies have broken a lot of glasses recently. Luckily they haven't gotten cut, but we still needed to find something to drink out of.

Goals:

- Sturdy, so babies can't break them easily

- 12-20oz seems like the right size

- fits comfortably in the dishwasher

- Not plastic, for reasons I described before.

- Cheap, ideally something that we can get used.

This turned out to be an easy one: we're using pint, regular-mouth mason jars. The meet all of the above, plus they can take a secure lid, so babies won't spill my pint of milk on the carpet.

I'm wondering how well they would work for tea and coffee, especially since you can get them with a handle. Will they cope with the thermal stress?

Storing leftovers

The babies are getting better at opening drawers and unloading the contents on to the floor. That means that all the things stored down low are now stacked on top of the things that are already stored up high. It's a mess.

The lowest drawer contained the plastic food storage containers. Even before the babies, this drawer was my nemesis - hard to keep organized, difficult to put things away, hard to get out what you need, and impossible to find a lid & container that match.

Now, those items are stored on a shelf that really didn't have the room to spare. (The picture on the right is the result of a dedicated organizing effort on that shelf; many of the items are either holding food in the fridge, or scattered around the house.) Frustrated by the chaos I can't control, I'm looking for something better.

Today I use mason jars for liquids (kombucha, milk, yogurt, kefir, and low-viscosity soups), as well as for fermentation, but they don't work well for, say, cheese. They're also a bit heavy and fragile for carrying in a backpack to a festival or something, and of course, they don't stack.

nesting. Nesting keeps things compact. You can often buy sets of plastic food storage containers that nest, but they only nest in one way. I want a set where each item nests in another of the same size & shape.

stacking lids. I need lids that have a sensible home, too. They should stack.

only a few sizes. Instead of a set of 20 items, each one of them different, I want only two or three sizes/shapes. This way it's easy to find a lid & a container that match, and I don't have to think very hard to select a container for the job. If I had two sizes, I'm guessing they'd need to be about one cup and one quart.

transparent. I want to be able to see what's inside without opening the lid.

durable with secure lid. Putting the container in my backpack shouldn't mean that everything else gets a taste of the contents. On a related note, removing the lid shouldn't be so hard that the contents go flying.

no sharp edges. I'm surprised I even have to write this, but my "disposable" Glad containers have rough edges, as a consequence of being made out of minimal materials.

glass or ceramic. I find that hand-washing plastic is hard - it never really feels clean. I am concerned about the chemical reactions between acidic foods and plastics, as well as the leeching of plastic compounds. I don't own a microwave, but I've heard concerns that microwaving in plastic can be dangerous, too.

Looking at my list, I don't think it's possible to find one item that can meet all of these needs. Right now, the best plan I can think of is a composite one:

• Mason jars continue to do what they're doing today.



• Keep a few of the plastic Tupperware-style containers for the backpack, in various sizes.



• A set of glass 1c and 1qt containers with good lids, similar to:
  

  That's the best that I can come up with. What do you recommend?
  

Food storage of the past

Thinking about food storage lately, I want to write what I know about how people did things before refridgeration:

Fermentation. Fermentation produces acids and alchohols that inhibit spoilage, thereby increasing the useful life of food. The classic example is sauerkraut (and cousins such as kim-chee) which, if made in the late fall, can keep all winter long, supplying the dinner table with tasty vegetables. It's not just about veggies - salamis and cheeses have been a big part of the European diet for a long time.

The cellar (and related spaces - stored winter ice, cool stream houses, etc.). The cool food cellar was important in the summer, when everywhere else was warm. But even in the winter, they allowed produce to keep longer in closer to ideal conditions.

Heartier crops. The fruits and vegetables we eat today are not the same strains that people ate a century ago. With the commercialization of the food supply, it made economic sense to pick foods for their shelf lives, durability, and appearance, vs. flavor and nutrition. One obvious example comes from apples:
in the 1970s, you could either get red "delicious" or golden "delicious". The "delicious" brand apples were chosen (and subsequently bred) not for their flavor, but for their color and their ability to last in cold storage until the next fall, providing "fresh" apples all year round.
When I switched to organic produce a few years ago I noticed a similar change - the food didn't look as smooth, uniform, shiny, and perfect, but it tasted so much better.

While the "delicious" strains had a long shelf life in cold storage, we also see that today's fresh produce doesn't last as long because of our farming practices. Healthy crops grown in rich soil are able to resist spoilage longer. I keep thinking of a blue-water sailing book from the 1970's, where the author suggested carrying produce on board in well-ventilated space, because it would last for months. That's unusual today.

On the shelf. I've seen a couple historical examples of keeping foods right on the shelf at room temperature, instead of refridgerating. One comes from the movie Big Night - in the last scene, Secundo picks up a bowl of eggs that were just sitting out, and makes breakfast. Another comes from the Aubrey/Maturin novels I've been reading, where a character will often pick up a peice of meat that sat out all night (or longer), put it in his pocket, go for a long hike, and eat the meat for lunch.

I'm not sure what to make of these examples, other than a suspicion that our ideas about what is required for safe food storage may be a bit overzealous.

Dump the fridge? I've been looking at listings for houses built in the 1920's and before. I find them beautiful. I also see that the fridge never fits. It sticks out in to the middle of the kitchen, or it's in the next room. I think it would be interesting to move towards fridgelessness one day. For the meantime, I'll try to take comfort in the thought that I only need 1/5th of a fridge, since I share mine with 4 others.

Decluttering the study

Another sign our house is too big - we found another space full of clutter that we hadn't though of before. This time it was the "study". This is a bedroom that once held all the computers and some desks, and we spend nearly all our waking hours in there, pre-children.

Today it's Reid's bedroom, but still full of stuff from those days. We thought he might like to put his clothes in there

- A big box of VHS and print porn and in storage there. Gone.
- Julie's old SLR camera. 9+ years unused. Given.
- Blank paper. In notebooks, pads, loose, etc. What is this for? Donated.
- A whiteboard w/ markers, eraser, and cleaner. Given.
- Dozens of "home improvement" magazines. Recycled.
- 7 milk crates that were holding all this and more. Only 2 are holding anything any more.
- PC speakers with subwoofer that may or may not work. Need to find a home for these.
- Family photographs. Saved.
- random CDs that were missing their cases, and cases that were missing their CDs. Matched & ripped; ready for storage.
- and much, much more!

Now the closet is almost completely empty. I'm not sure where the milk crates will go.

I also decided to get rid of about 1/2 of the books I own. That's not a huge difference, as previously all my books fit on one shelf. Now they share a shelf with other books.

Damn, it feels good.

Next up:
- the "cat room" was the victim of random accumulations ahead of the babies' birthday party. Need to clear that out.
- Still a few "junk boxes" that need to be sorted out

Birthday walk

On the babies' first birthday, I took them for a walk. The idea was that they would fall asleep in the stroller, and then be well-rested when the guests started arriving.

Great journalism of 2007: Women living alone

Check out this article entitled Watch out, men! More women opt to live alone. It says that 51% of US women are not married.

Let's temporarily assume that we live in a world where everyone is heterosexual, and where the population is evenly split between men and women. Bear with me.

I have to ask, "to whom are these women not married?" Close to 1/2 of men are not married, too, right? Why is the fact that many men are not married unworthy of a headline warning women?

And why are women chosing it? Isn't marriage a mutual decision? If 99% of men made the choice to stay single, then just as many women are going to be single, without having made a choice to that effect.

And why is it a problem for men? Am I supposed be disappointed that women are choosing not to get married? If I were single & looking, I might be glad that women aren't expecting me to commit to a life-time.

And what's with this "living alone" bit? Don't unmarried couples often live together? Don't married couples sometimes choose to live separately? Don't people live together when not in a marriage, as roommates?

And back to by original assumption: isn't this article a bit absurd when you consider that not every woman can legally marry her partner of choice, even if they're both willing?

So it's valentines day. By tradition, today we buy sugar for our sweeties, as well as roses, which often create serious health risks for the people who grow them (due to the chemicals used). I think I need something romantic that still aligns with my values.

How 'bout: drop me a line if you want to get horizontal. Boobs preferred.

That should do the trick.

I want Wiki! (Part 2)

The more time I spend on wikis, the more I wish wiki-like functionality was available elsewhere. 

 

For example, I've been reading through the Q and A section on the Ishmael site.  People have sent Quinn a lot of questions, and the questions with answeres are posted on his site.  I read a question, try to formulate an answer in my head, and then see what Quinn has to say.  I'm not just checking if I have the "right answer", but instead trying to understand what the differences in our answers mean.

 

In some cases, I feel like I could provide a richer answer than what is there - an answer that would be helpful to readers.  In those cases, I wish for Wiki.

 

Here's an example (http://www.ishmael.com/Interaction/QandA/Detail.CFM?Record=57 ):

 

Q: My chosen profession has begun to look like "part of the problem" rather than "part of the solution." I'm beginning to feel obliged to abandon it, as a matter of conscience. Do you see it this way?

 

A: You're wondering if we wouldn't be better off if your chosen profession didn't exist at all. A young film maker once expressed the same reservation to me (unknown to the general public, film-making is a tremendously pollutive business). I told him what I'll tell you: WHERE WOULD WE BE IF EVERYONE WITH A CONSCIENCE GOT OUT OF HIS CHOSEN PROFESSION?

We MUST HAVE film makers like him---and people like you in your profession! We must NOT cede key professions to people who care about nothing but profits.

This happens in plenty of other contexts, not just filmmakers who have been infected with Quinn's ideas.  For example, a few years ago when the debate about gay marriage was reaching a crescendo in the news media, I remember a lot of folks who were feeling frustrated talk about moving to Canada.  Similar to the case that Quinn describes, fleeing the USA because of politics you disagree with will just allow the politics to move further from what you're wanting.

 

But if I had wiki-like functionality on this page, what I would add is this:

 

 Don't assume that DQ is telling you to keep doing exactly the same job you're doing today.  You can change how you do your job, to address these concerns.  You can also change jobs in the same profession.

 

To consider the filmmaker example, you could direct your efforts to support making films that help your audience ask questions about Mother Culture.  You could help reduce the waste produced by the film projects you work on.  You could quit your job (but not your profession) and start a new film studio, organized as a tribal business (as suggested in Beyond Civilization).  You could do all three!

 

On the other hand, if you picked your current profession because it would bring you money and power, even though you hate the work, then switching professions may make good sense.  Trade money and power or something much better.

 

 

I want wiki! (Part 1)

I've been exploring the writing on Wikipedia regarding Daniel Quinn.  These are complex topics, so it's not a given that the writing there would be on target.  So far, it seems to be in reasonably good shape.

 

A particularly interesting article to me is New Tribalists.  It has twice as much content in the Criticism section as in the rest of the page.  It appears that a Criticism section is an important part of Wikipedia's attempt to produce a " Neutral Point of View".  What you'll often see is a paragraph describing a critcism, followed by a paragraph of response. 

 

That's good news in this case.  When you don't understand what a sensible person is saying, it will usually seem like nonsense.  You criticise, and then the speaker has a chance to respond with clarification.  It's a dialog that is somewhat similar to much of the dialog in Ishmael and My Ishmael. 

 

I'd like to make a few minor contributies to this article, to hopefully improve its value, but apparently I've been blocked!  It looks like someone with an IP address close to mine did something damaging on Wikipedia, and an admin has blocked an IP range in an attempt to stop them.  Unfortunately, they got me, as well.

 

I'm new to Wikipedia, so I'm still figuring out what's going on, but I don't see my IP in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Ipblocklist .  *sigh*

Someone who gets me...

Apparently The Lacatvist is being sued by the pork industry for a T-Shirt. Some people's priorities are clearly backwards ("let's make more money by abusing pigs, at the cost of children's health"). Must suck to be them.

Her Cafe Press store includes this fine example.

Evolution has halted

In one of his books (The Story of B maybe?), Quinn said that we have halted evolution.  He only mentioned the idea in passing, and it hasn't reappeared in other books, so I'm guessing he doesn't consider it a key element of his ideas.  Still, it is one that caught my attention. What does he mean?
 

Modern medicine and friends

 
I've heard people say something like this before, but usually it turns out that they just don't understand what evolution is.  They typically mean something like 
 

In the 'wild', people who (can't see / can't walk / have regular seizures / have acute ashma / have low sperm counts / etc.) would not survive to reproduce, thus the human species would tend to select for the opposite traits.  Thanks to modern medicine we allow these traits to continue to occur, and potentially proliferate in our gene pool, resulting in a weaker human population over time.

Or to put it colloquially, "our technology means that the human species is getting worse."  (The problem with that statement, of course, is that evolution doesn't say anything about "better" or "worse" but merely about "more fit" and "less fit" to survive in a given niche.)

 

I don't disagree that this occurs.  In fact, I have an example that is close to home.  My English grandfather was not sent off to fight in World War II, because he had asthma.  While his healthier peers went off & died, he stayed home and had 3 children, all of whom had some breathing issues.  I have some of those traits, albeit mild ones.  The decision to select non-asthmatics as soldiers meant that we selected for asthma in the next generation of the English.

 

However, this doesn't mean that evolution has halted.  It means that the mechanism of selection has changed.  In a hunter-gatherer tribe, the ability to, well, hunt and gather, is clearly critical to survival, so characteristics that interfere with the ability to do those things ( e.g. blindness) are likely to reduce reproduction, and hence their representation in the gene pool.  In modern, civilized society, the criteria are different, but they still exist.  For example, physical attractiveness is still a factor in sexual selection; the ability to eliminate or tolerate certain toxins (e.g., cadmium, mercury) or radiation is more important today than it was 10,000 years ago.  So, evolution of humans still occurs today, and will always occur.

 

Similarly, the characteristics that are selected for in other species have been dramatically affected by the world-wide dominance of human civilization.  The traits of cows are desirable to humans as a food source, so we increase their opportunity to proliferate.  Meanwhile, predators of cows, such as wolves, have traits that interfere with cow's proliferation, so we reduce their opportunity to proliferate.  In these ways, we have a dramatic impact on the gene pools of both cows and wolves on the earth.

 

Now, I don't know for sure what Quinn meant, but I'm guessing this isn't it.  He clearly has a deep understanding of evolution and natural selection -- probably much deeper than mine -- so he probably wouldn't make such a simple error.

 

Food supply limitations

 

Perhaps what Quinn meant was:

 

Consider that civilized humans transform available land from its wild state to a food-producing state.  We do this rapidly and efficiently, thereby allowing us to produce corresponding increases in food supply.  Whereas non-civilized peoples have allowed food supply to limit their numbers ("living in the hands of the gods"), we have effectively removed the limits on food availability for nearly all humans on earth.  In this way, a limited food supply is not a significant factor in the gene selection of civilized people.

 

That seems much more reasonable, and in line with a lot of what Quinn has to say elsewhere, but I still have trouble believing that's what he meant.  Saying that you have "stopped evolution" seems to be a much stronger statement than saying that you have "removed food supply limitations as an environmental selector".

 

Who lives and who dies?

 

Or perhaps he meant:

 

Consider that civilized humans will, without hestiation, obliterate obstacles to increasing food supply for humans.  Cows like to graze pasture, so we'll destroy rain forests extremely rapidly ( 100 acres / minute!), destorying the "inconsequential" life in that area, so that our cows may graze.  If wolves show interest in our cows, we won't just defend the cows when the wolves approach.  We systematically seek out and destroy all wolves, nearly eliminating them as a species, on purpose.  We make the decisions about which species thrive and which are decimated.  For millions of years, the selection was made by a complex mix of natural forces; for the past 10,000 years, we have taken that decision in to our own hands.  We decide who lives and who dies.

 

The gods love diversity

 

Or perhaps even:

 

The universe if full of diversity.  Each blade of grass is unique.  Each plant is unique.  Each mammal is unique.  Each species is unique.  Just as the Law of Gravity is written in every particle of matter, the Law of Life is written in every living thing.  Diversity of life is at the essense of that law.  Diversity of life is at the essense of the theory of natural selection.  Civilized man has dramatically reduced the diversity of life on the earth, by driving some species to extinction, while we allow others to proliferate almost unchecked.  The result dismantles the normal functioning of evolution by natural selection.

 

It's just selection

 

Maybe it's something much simpler.  Wikipedia's summary of Darwin's theory is "populations evolve over the course of generations through a process of natural selection".  Under natural selection, it says:

Natural selection is the process by which favorable traits that are heritable propagate throughout a reproductive population: individual organisms with favorable traits are more likely to survive and reproduce than those with unfavorable traits. If these traits have a genetic basis, then the genotypes associated with the favored traits will increase in frequency in the next generation. Given enough time, this passive process results in adaptations and speciation (see evolution). Natural selection explains why living creatures seem to match their environmental niches so well.

Natural selection is one of the cornerstones of modern biology. The term was introduced by Charles Darwin in his groundbreaking 1859 book The Origin of Species, ^[1] by analogy with artificial selection, by which a farmer selects his breeding stock.

So, maybe Quinn means "we've stopped evolution by replacing natural selection with artificial selection".

 

Hmm.  This last one seems the most plausible -- it's the one that holds together, and the one that you'd expect from someone who had studied evolution carefully.