If you want your lawn to survive, it's a good idea to turn on the sprinkler water all the way. If the faucet is hard to turn and so you think, "oh well, that's far enough," there's a good chance most of your lawn will turn to straw before someone points out that the reason the sprinkler heads aren't rotating is because you don't have much water pressure.
I just thought I would pass on that bit of advice to you all.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Rollover Minutes
I got out a rattle for Simon, but Benji has adopted it. It's a phone, yes, but Ben hasn't seen anyone use a phone that looks like this. Everyone has a cell phone nowadays, and even regular phones are just rectangles. Ben's two toy phones are both cell phones. Do you own a phone that is two round pieces connected by a stick? Me neither. Yet he just knows this is a phone. It must be something instinctive.
Children mimic the adults around them. Do I really sound like this on the phone? You can be honest.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Tummy Time
It's baby work-out time! Simon has to exercise his neck muscles, and that means he has to be on his tummy a lot. He has an umbilical hernia, so I hadn't put him on his tummy for the first couple months of his life. His neck muscles were still as weak as a newborn when he was a couple months old. So this is his chance to buff up that neck!
I was trying to figure out why the tummy-time toys are all bent down in this picture. Ben walks on them, that's why they're all smashed flat. Ben's participation in tummy time is to try and stand right next to Simon's face.
Isn't he doing well? Simon's goal in life is to look to the left. His neck muscles favor the right side, so I have to stretch his muscles so he can look left too. He's started looking left all by himself, and I'm just so proud! Look left, my son, look left!
I was trying to figure out why the tummy-time toys are all bent down in this picture. Ben walks on them, that's why they're all smashed flat. Ben's participation in tummy time is to try and stand right next to Simon's face.
Isn't he doing well? Simon's goal in life is to look to the left. His neck muscles favor the right side, so I have to stretch his muscles so he can look left too. He's started looking left all by himself, and I'm just so proud! Look left, my son, look left!
Friday, June 27, 2008
Jumping Ben
He's not even two yet, that's why his feet don't come off the floor!
(Also, he 'speaks' an empty baby-talk sentence, full of liquid vowels and intonation, just waiting for him to learn the words to fill it in.)
Well, if you're feet don't jump, maybe your fish can! (Caution: swallow before watching this, or your drink will come out your nose.)
Sadly, his feet don't come up during his jumps even when he's on a mattress to try and help them along.
(Also, he 'speaks' an empty baby-talk sentence, full of liquid vowels and intonation, just waiting for him to learn the words to fill it in.)
Well, if you're feet don't jump, maybe your fish can! (Caution: swallow before watching this, or your drink will come out your nose.)
Sadly, his feet don't come up during his jumps even when he's on a mattress to try and help them along.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Book Review: The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson
The Ghost Map is the most interesting book about raw sewage I’ve ever read! If you only read one book about poop in your entire life, this is the book to read.
The “ghost map” refers to the map on which Dr. John Snow plotted the deaths from the cholera outbreak in London in 1854. Cholera is a bacterial infection in the lower intestine that causes violent diarrhea until the sufferer dies of dehydration. If the victim can drink enough water, his body can usually fight off the infection. No one knew that, though. Cholera had an extremely high mortality rate in the last century.
Dr. Snow believed cholera was transmitted by contaminated water, but no one agreed with him. Most people agreed that cholera spread by miasma. Stinky air made you sick. With an idea like that, no one much bothered with the cleanliness of the water. London was pumping raw sewage into the Thames about as fast as it was pumping its drinking water out of the Thames.
The scientific method was still in its infancy. The idea that you should test your idea to see if you were right was almost insulting to the intelligentsia of the day. If everyone knew something to be true, there was no need to show it was true by independent research. ‘Miasmatists’ controlled public health measures because everyone had always known that bad smells caused disease. Dr. Snow wasn’t just up against a wrong idea; he was up against an entire way of thinking.
Doctor John Snow and Vicar Henry Whitehead tracked the deaths from this particular cholera outbreak to show that the Broad Street water pump was spreading cholera. With lists of the dead in hand, the two men knocked on doors, asking survivors if they had drunk from the Broad Street pump, or if the deceased had done so. They tracked down people who had fled the neighborhood, and asked them where they got their water. It was a laborious and intrusive bit of detective work, but it paid off. They convinced a government committee of the Broad Street pump’s danger. The committee shut off the pump, and the outbreak stopped.
When the committee had the pump excavated, they discovered that the cesspool of the neighboring apartment building was draining into the well. And yes, a young mother had washed her sick baby’s diapers in water she had thrown into the cesspool in the days before the baby died. There is no hint in the record if anyone every told that young mother that hundreds of people had died because she had cleaned up after her dying baby as best she could in the conditions that existed in London in 1854. I hope they didn’t tell her.
Over the next few decades, the idea that cholera came from sewage in the water gradually spread, and the government started to pay attention to water quality. Bazalgette designed a massive sewer system for London that was so well-done that London still uses the tunnels and design today (although the equipment has obviously been upgraded).
The Ghost Map is also a story about the history of cities. In 1854, life in a city was a chancy proposition because of poor sanitation, bad construction, and appalling working conditions. Society was holding its breath to see if cities were a viable way of life, or if humanity ought to scatter back to the farm. The verdict is in. Cities are here to stay; they’re going to get bigger; and they provide a better life than rural living does, even in third world countries that still have conditions from the 1850s in their cities.
Johnson wrote a fascinating account of disease, cities, and the scientific method. It was hard to put down, and I don’t often say that about a non-fiction book. I can’t recommend this book highly enough.
And I wasn’t kidding about the first paragraph. Johnson explains how poop was handled in London in 1854 before there were sewer systems. It’s enough to make you say a prayer of gratitude every time you flush your toilet.
The “ghost map” refers to the map on which Dr. John Snow plotted the deaths from the cholera outbreak in London in 1854. Cholera is a bacterial infection in the lower intestine that causes violent diarrhea until the sufferer dies of dehydration. If the victim can drink enough water, his body can usually fight off the infection. No one knew that, though. Cholera had an extremely high mortality rate in the last century.
Dr. Snow believed cholera was transmitted by contaminated water, but no one agreed with him. Most people agreed that cholera spread by miasma. Stinky air made you sick. With an idea like that, no one much bothered with the cleanliness of the water. London was pumping raw sewage into the Thames about as fast as it was pumping its drinking water out of the Thames.
The scientific method was still in its infancy. The idea that you should test your idea to see if you were right was almost insulting to the intelligentsia of the day. If everyone knew something to be true, there was no need to show it was true by independent research. ‘Miasmatists’ controlled public health measures because everyone had always known that bad smells caused disease. Dr. Snow wasn’t just up against a wrong idea; he was up against an entire way of thinking.
Doctor John Snow and Vicar Henry Whitehead tracked the deaths from this particular cholera outbreak to show that the Broad Street water pump was spreading cholera. With lists of the dead in hand, the two men knocked on doors, asking survivors if they had drunk from the Broad Street pump, or if the deceased had done so. They tracked down people who had fled the neighborhood, and asked them where they got their water. It was a laborious and intrusive bit of detective work, but it paid off. They convinced a government committee of the Broad Street pump’s danger. The committee shut off the pump, and the outbreak stopped.
When the committee had the pump excavated, they discovered that the cesspool of the neighboring apartment building was draining into the well. And yes, a young mother had washed her sick baby’s diapers in water she had thrown into the cesspool in the days before the baby died. There is no hint in the record if anyone every told that young mother that hundreds of people had died because she had cleaned up after her dying baby as best she could in the conditions that existed in London in 1854. I hope they didn’t tell her.
Over the next few decades, the idea that cholera came from sewage in the water gradually spread, and the government started to pay attention to water quality. Bazalgette designed a massive sewer system for London that was so well-done that London still uses the tunnels and design today (although the equipment has obviously been upgraded).
The Ghost Map is also a story about the history of cities. In 1854, life in a city was a chancy proposition because of poor sanitation, bad construction, and appalling working conditions. Society was holding its breath to see if cities were a viable way of life, or if humanity ought to scatter back to the farm. The verdict is in. Cities are here to stay; they’re going to get bigger; and they provide a better life than rural living does, even in third world countries that still have conditions from the 1850s in their cities.
Johnson wrote a fascinating account of disease, cities, and the scientific method. It was hard to put down, and I don’t often say that about a non-fiction book. I can’t recommend this book highly enough.
And I wasn’t kidding about the first paragraph. Johnson explains how poop was handled in London in 1854 before there were sewer systems. It’s enough to make you say a prayer of gratitude every time you flush your toilet.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Yep, we went again
It's starting to look like all we ever do is go to Thanksgiving Point. Yep, that's about all we ever do. Then I put up pictures from every single visit because Dirk needs to see them. Yep, here are more pictures from the Thanksgiving Point fountain. As a special bonus, I remembered to get some pictures of Simon this time!
Monday, June 23, 2008
Simon's muscle tee
Here is my buff baby showing off those biceps! That's actually a chub-crease on his arm, not a muscle-crease, but you already knew that.
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