Sometimes you Feel Like Father of the Year

...without doing a darn thing.

I've seen repeated references to this over the last week in various corners of the 'Net, but really haven't bothered to read the details 'til now. According to the Minnesota Daily"

With the birth of his son 15 years ago, dedicated linguist d'Armond Speers embarked on the ultimate experiment: He spoke to him only in Klingon — the language of the alien race of "Star Trek" fame — for the first three years of his life.

"I was interested in the question of whether my son, going through his first language acquisition process, would acquire it like any human language," Speers said. "He was definitely starting to learn it."

Now I have the first edition of Simon & Schuster's Klingon-English Dictionary (also the book tape recorded by Michael Dorn), I even memorized a phrase or two from it back in high school--as did many of my friends. But that's just geeky fun, as is the Klingon Boggle that the guys on The Big Bang Theory play, it's a bit extreme, but you know there are people out there that do that.

But this guy takes the cake, right? What a nerd! Something about that story didn't work right, I know fanboys tend towards the odd, and frequently pathetic, but...as goofy as we tend to be, we do manage to keep a foot in reality.

But I guess that's why you need to read all the context. The Klingon child-rearing is not the point of the article, it was actually an introduction to talking about this company making nifty language learning software and Speers' consulting for it.

He's actually not a Trekker at all,

As for Speers, who still gets nostalgic when he recalls singing the Klingon lullaby "May the Empire Endure" with his son at bedtime, the experiment was a dud. His son is now in high school and doesn't speak a word of Klingon.

Although some of the things he's done lead people to believe he's a "Star Trek" fanatic, Speers said it's actually a passion for language that attracts him to Klingon.

"I don’t go to 'Star Trek' conventions, I don't wear the fake forehead," he said. "I’m a linguist."

Ahhh, now it makes sense. Nerds, geeks, fanboys and all will ultimately (often times far too late, see these people) show some restraint.

Academics on the other hand...

Miscellaney: Twilight, Cell Phones, Vids, and other stuff

This afternoon, I really wanted to write up something on the new DVD set Monty Python: Almost the Truth, but I just don't have the time/attention span. Hopefully I can crank it out at work tonight. So, we'll just do this list of things that come to mind for no reason.

• Chuck comes back on January 10, Burn Notice on the 28th. January's gonna be a killer month.
  
• Not that anyone really cares about my take on this, but as someone who knows next to nothing about cell phone technology, the Samsung Solstice is really nice, and once I get better at the whole touch screen thing I will probably become enslaved to it.
  
• I'm reading the Twilight Saga this month, I'd read the Twilight before it became a mega-sensation, but hadn't gotten to the rest of the series. I'm halfway through Eclipse, and even tho' I know it's moot (and a lost battle), I have to say I'm a Team Jacob guy. (I can't believe I took a side in this...what's wrong with me? Feel free to fill up the comments section on that one).
  
• Whoever did this has way too much time on their hands, one of the better jobs along these lines I've seen:
  
  
• This ain't too shabby, either
  
  
• When Matt Smith was cast as Doctor Who last year, I could only wonder about the sanity of Steven Moffat (who I trusted almost implicitly before this), and wondered if he could pull it off. After watching The Waters of Mars I could only feel sorry for the poor guy. I imagine him watching that and calling his agent to get him out of it, "I don't want to have to follow this guy!!!"
  
• There's a real downside to school uniforms...particularly if you have grade school boys. 2 of the 4 came home with ruined pants today (I seriously want to send a bill to the parents of the kid that tripped Samwise).
  
• Be careful before you click this link, you'll end up singing a particular song for a day or three, but it would be very cool (for some reason, Facebook wouldn't allow me to post the 4 times I tried) if Nathan Fillion got his dream role.
  
• As I mentioned recently, The Swell Season's new album Strict Joy is just great--I ponied up the extra money and got about 2 hours of concert tracks along with the album. On one of the tracks, Glen Hansard starts talking about recently being introduced to the Freaks and Geeks DVD set (gift idea, btw), which made me like him even more. So when he twittered about this song last night, I had to check youtube just in case. It had already been posted, this internet being the quick thing that it is. This is a hoot and a half (but very "adult" material, consider yourself warned).
  
  
• Semi-serious note, in what will be sure to be controversial, Roger Ebert un-anonymizes himself. Very inspirational.
  
• If anyone with a flair for graphic arts or whatever wants 3-4 very small jobs (with smaller budgets), lemme know.
  
• Lastly, I finally topped the 50% mark today in NaNoWriMo!! Yeah, I'm 4 days late on that, but as TLomL noted (and I doubted until I later verified) I was even more behind last year. The amount of research I'm going to have to do on top of the editing on this thing is going to be daunting, but at least it'll keep me busy.

What Messages are We Watching?

Hate to simply point you to another person's blogging today, particularly a blog I pointed to last week, but in my defense: A. It's been one of those days; and 2. This is a great post worthy of my pointing, your clicking.

From Geek Dad (my favorite corner of Wired.com, so glad ThinkGeek promoted them recently in a newsletter): Top 10 Bad Messages From Good Movies (somewhat tongue in cheek, but decent point)

Sometimes it can be hard to see the messages a movie teaches, especially if they’re unintentional. The best way to see a movie’s messages, the bad ones in particular, is to be a parent watching the movie with your kids. Suddenly you find yourself talking to your kids after you leave the theater or after the video finishes playing at home, just to see if they picked up on the bad messages. Then, if they did, you can try to do some damage control.

Quality doesn’t generally come into play when it comes to messages: There are plenty of bad movies whose messages are perfectly benign, and plenty of good movies that have messages you definitely wouldn’t want your kids to take to heart. It is this latter category with which this list is concerned. Here then is a countdown of the top 10 bad messages in good (and at least somewhat geeky) movies:

I'd picked up some of these on my own, and wish I'd thought of the rest. Like many parents, I really do care about the messages sent/received through the movies my kids watch.

Pixar's Up

We finally caught Up this weekend. Personally, I had high hopes for this movie, but have to admit to a good deal of trepidation as I hit the "play" button. While Ratatouille was cute enough, and was well done, it was at the the bottom of my Pixar list (near the bottom of animated family flicks, honestly), until WALL•E came out anyway--what a snooze-fest! So I was a little worried that Pixar might have run out of magic.

I didn't even get through the title sequence before I knew that wasn't true. How could your heart not melt (or at least get a bit squishy) watching Carl and Ellie's life together. And Up just got better from there.

The voice talents rocked--particularly Bob Peterson pulling double duty as Dug and Alpha (Dug's my second favorite dog character of the year, I'd gladly watch his further adventures even if Russel and Carl weren't anywhere around). It took Frodo a syllable to recognize ol' John Ratzenberger, just wish his part had been bigger. Of course, Ed Asner carried the film, and did so easily--Carl practically lived and breathed, the combination of that animation and Asner's voice was a match made in heaven.

This, incidentally, is one of those movies that makes our upgrade to BluRay last year absolutely worth it...gorgeous movie.

The plot may not have been Pixar's strongest (wasn't the weakest, I'll add quickly), but whatever small problems it had, they vanished in the overall brilliance of this film.

Funny, heartfelt, exciting, and touching--everything you expect from Pixar.

Grade: A+

NaNoWriMo Update

Those of you keeping score at home^* have noticed those progress bars to the right haven't moved much in the last week--and actually not at all for a few days. Yup. Whoops.

I hit a pothole, and while NaNoWriMo is all about pushing yourself, to keep on writing and not bother with things like fact checking or editing, etc. until you have a first draft, I'd reached a point that without some research, I couldn't progress at all. So I took the time to do the research, which was helpful, but destroyed the 3 or 4 ideas to keep the plot moving forward. I came up with 2 real solid plans from the research though, but couldn't figure out how to incorporate them into my story without rewriting at least half of it (and aging my 10 year old protagonist by 3-5 years, which would make a fairly significant change in how he acts, thinks, and talks--and I really wasn't in the mood for that).

So I spent another day and a half just stuck there. Which was so, so, not fun at all. Not even thinking about my word count, just that I'd lost momentum--and was having a pretty fun time writing daily.

Thankfully, a tangential point of my research, one that promised no potential plotlines at all, turned out to be my savior. I just had to be desperate enough to see it. I really can't give a satisfactory explanation for it without summarizing my whole story up to this point and through the end--and I'm one of those writers that can't do that. The instant I tell someone my plot, it's DOA.

Today's main writing session was cut brief by Real Life™--dentist appointments, getting a new cell phone, trying to figure out how to use the new cell phone, etc. (I may relate the embarrassing events leading up to the new phone tomorrow, if I'm feeling up to the humble pie)--and was encumbered by all this inertia built up over the weekend. But towards the end, I think I could tell I was reaching a turning point.

Let's hope I did...am about 5K behind now. :)

^* Wow, really, you are? And I thought I needed to get a life.

Thought for the Lord's Day - #49

No man shall ever behold the glory of Christ by sight hereafter, who doth not in some measure behold it by faith here in this world. Grace is a necessary preparation for glory, and faith for sight Where the subject (the soul) is not previously seasoned with grace and faith, it is not capable of glory or vision. Nay, persons not disposed hereby unto it cannot desire it, whatever they pretend; they only deceive their own souls in supposing that so they do. Most men will say with confidence, living and dying, that they desire to be with Christ, and to behold his glory; but they can give no reason why they should desire any such thing,-only they think it somewhat that is better than to be in that evil condition which otherwise they must be cast into for ever, when they can be here no more. If a man pretend himself to be enamoured on, or greatly to desire, what he never saw, nor was ever represented unto him, he doth but dote on his own imaginations. And the pretended desires of many to behold the glory of Christ in heaven, who have no view of it by faith whilst they are there in this world are nothing but self-deceiving imaginations.

- John Owen

Well, What Can You Say?

Really not a lot to say about the UI-BSU game today. Vandal fans had more than just habit/school pride going for us this year when we talked about our chances. Sadly, hope doesn't mean much on the football field when it runs into a ranked team really needing an impressive showing and a freshman quarterback on his second start.

Instead, I'll try to focus on the positive things about today...there were some, I just have to think about it a little...

Oh yeah, we had a pleasant time with my sister and niece...and technically with the friend my sister brought with her, just hard to count the friend as I think I heard her say 20 words in the 4 hours she spent here (she did talk more than that, but outside of those 20 words, they were all basically whispered to my sister). TLomL learned how to make a new appetizer/game day snack. My boys learned a little more about football, so in later life they'll be slightly less likely to embarrass themselves in social settings. I was able to get WonderMutt to not excitedly jump all over/terrify guests (for politeness sake, we won't go into the amount of work/time that took). We came up with a great number of creative ways to say "stupid Rotator cuff." My sister demonstrated a shocking lack of knowledge about the our alma mater (how does someone spend five years in that city, much less as a student and walk away not knowing about the "I" bench and "Hello Walk"?) and we had a good time laughing about that--I know when she visited me in high school I pointed those things out to her. We also got an important lesson in being thankful for the little things, cuz I'm sure we wouldn't remember any of those things right now if the game had been competitive for more than 30 seconds.


I'm going to show restraint and not rant about the local media acting like the game was a silly formality. Is a little respect that hard? Especially given the number of UI alums in their audience.

Nathan Enderle, may you get better soon...

Sure The Doctor Danced with Rose,

... but Capt. Jack can do just fine on his own.


When I saw this posted over at Sci Fi Wire, the only thing I could think was, "This guy came across as too straight to be cast in the lead of Will & Grace???" Oh well, rather have him as Capt. Jack/The Face of Bo anytime.

New Releases to Get a Bit Stale?

Entertainment juggernaut Netflix has apparently been in talks with the major studios in the movie biz to get better prices on their DVD purchases (or so I read). Makes sense, and I can't imagine any one buyer right now in a better position to get their suppliers to capitulate. But here's the rub, the studios want Netflix to delay access (rental, streaming) for a month in return, an effort to help slumping sales.

More power to 'em both, I say. Especially if Netflix passes along the savings to their customers. I can wait another month for a new release...it may, may make it more likely that I'll purchase a movie--but probably not. I really don't see the downside here--if anything my desire to see the DVD when Netflix can release it will be a little greater.

There Ought To Be A Law...

No time for a real post today, between mourning the passing of Dollhouse and trying to dig myself out of a plot complication (namely, I have no idea what the core conflict of this 50K word beast needs to be and I'm almost 40% done), so instead, allow me to recommend the following post from Wire'd Geek Dad blog:
10 Geeky Laws That Should Exist, But Don’t, a list of things like Newton’s (a different one) laws of motion, Boyle’s Law, and Godwin’s Law that should be axioms by now. Numbers 1, 3, 8 and 9 are particularly good, and I just have to quote 7.
7. Starbucks’ and Peet’s Law: C₈H₁₀N₄O₂, better known as caffeine, is the most wonderful chemical compound known to humankind. If the field of chemistry had never identified or produced a single other useful compound, caffeine alone would be justification enough for its existence.