My Son Sean

Is very tired, and he wants to go to bed but he can't because he's doing his math homework.

I asked him for a blog topic; those are his exact words.

I am incredibly impressed and proud of my son Sean. As a sophomore in high school, he is in his fifth year of advanced placement math. To remain in this program, he has maintained a high 80s/low 90s average for the course, and high honor role status overall.

This year, he will complete the regents math requirement. Next year he will be eligible to take college-level math for credit.

We think, in preparation for college-level math, the math teach has significantly altered teaching tactics, perhaps teaching a bit more like a college course. Many students in his course have faltered this year as a result; some have opted out of the advanced placement math program.

Sean, too, struggled initially, bringing home his first ever grade that showed the struggle. He was discouraged by this, understandably.

But we talked to him about changing study strategies. And we talked to him about life, and how you can't just quit when something gets hard, you need to give it your best. Despite our encouragement and words of wisdom, we weren't sure what he would decide.

He persevered and has turned the grade around! WOW! That took guts, courage, strength of character, and smarts!

He's a lot more disciplined than I ever was. And a lot smarter, too.

Excellent job, Sean! Keep up the great work!

Robert Heinlein

At least once every human should have to run for his life, to teach him that milk does not come from supermarkets, that safety does not come from policemen, that "news" is not something that happens to other people. He might learn how his ancestors lived and that he himself is no different – in the crunch, his life depends on his agility, alertness, and personal resourcefulness.

–Robert Heinlein
The Number of the Beast

Bus Ride

The kids like talking about their bus drivers. Their favorite was Lee, the bus driver for elementary school.

Their least favorite was Karen, the bus driver for middle school. Karen is a bit rigid and unfair.

Emily has her now and is quick to point out how Karen hates her ... because of all the things Sean did. The benefits of being second.

Sean was once punished for saying "weinus", which presumably refers to a piece of skin on your elbow (although I cannot find that definition anywhere). He was made to sit in the front seat for a few days for that.

Sean says she took her job too seriously, like a class, and would punish you as if to say "you're failing Bus Ride."

My Copy Rights

I love my iPod, but I’m faced with a dilemma concerning some of my music files: I didn’t buy them.

When I purchase copyrighted music, what am I purchasing?

Obviously, I am purchasing the media: a CD, an actual disc, with a case, and artwork, and packaging. In an extended sense, I am also purchasing the effort required to bring it to the store where I buy it. And not to forget the artist, I am purchasing the performance itself from the musicians.

But I am also purchasing the right to play the music, as often as I want, anywhere I want, with anyone else present with whom I want to enjoy it.

When the media changes, such as with the wane of vinyl and the advent of CDs, do I cede my rights to play the music?

In the olden days, I would unfortunately have to repurchase the music if I wanted to play it on the new media. A vinyl record just wouldn’t work in a CD player, and there was nothing I could do to make it work in the CD player. If I wanted to play the music in the CD player, I had to purchase new media.

Tucked into the cost of that new media, however, was a small amount set aside that included a repurchase of my right to play it. It was a nominal amount, so while I grumbled that I had to purchase the music again, I went along.

With CDs, however, there’s a little hiccup to my advantage. I can make my CD media work on my iPod. I can convert the CD into an .mp3 file, rather easily, through a process called “ripping.”

I think this is legal to do, so long as I have a legitimate and legal copy to start from.

But why would this be legal?

Well, because I already have a legal copy. That is to say, I already own the right to play the music. So, I have not ceded my right to play the music just because the media changed.

Now, what if I own a bunch of vinyl records; shouldn’t I, then, be entitled to updated media? Well, no, because there is all that materials and handling cost associated with the media.

Oh yes, I am paying for materials costs when I purchase a CD, that’s right. And arguably the production costs account for the majority of the cost associated with that media.

But what if I don’t want a CD and all of that media and its associated costs? What if all I want is an .mp3 file? Certainly a single .mp3 file—which can be replicated millions and millions of times and delivered to me at almost no cost—should be offered to me at a commensurate fraction of price.

And yet, I am required, once again, to repurchase the music, and my right to play it, at price rates comparable to purchasing CD media.

Seems like someone is being “ripped” here, certainly.

I believe as long as the music industry maintains its “olden days” mentality, which requires you to repurchase your rights along with new media, that there will be a robust underground of ripped music, an underground which represents individual efforts to reclaim rights.

Sci Fi

I have dedicated the majority of my reading time over the past few years to science fiction. I've always enjoyed sci-fi and for the past few years I have been catching up to all the sci-fi I've meant to read in my life.

I've been making my way through the Hugo and Nebula award winners, dating back to the some classic authors and works in the 1950's and 1960's. I've been sure to include some more recent works by newer authors, too.

This range of eras offers some interesting contrasts, and provides what I think are two critical sci-fi components, or values, authors must keep in mind when writing. They are:

• Social morays
• Imaginative technology

All of the attitudes and customs we assume constitute our social morays. It's how we've been taught to act, think, and behave, and the roles we've been taught to accept since birth.

Reading Isaac Asimov's Foundation series provides a good example of this. It is, at times, almost unbearable because of the overt "second-class-citizening" of women that saturates the language and story. It's the men who are doing everything and the women getting in the way. There is some of this in Robert Heinlein's Farnham's Freehold as well, but not quite to the extent as in Foundation.

So the first rule for sci-fi authors must be: don't entrench your work in the social morays of our day.

Unto itself, this provides a challenge for writers: how to you recognize today what will be perceived tomorrow as "archaic", especially given that you've been brought up within this emersion of social morays making it all the more difficult to identify them.

It also provides a challenging paradox. In order for the work to be appreciated by today's audience—which I presume they do, or their books won't sell—there must be some degree of social morays embedded in them or the audience won't be able to relate. An unrelated audience is an audience lost.

The second item is a really interesting one: imaginative technology.

Imaginative technology is the ability for an author to present ideas for technologies that don't exist today but that could exist tomorrow. Such technology presumably would alter, possibly dramatically, how we exist, interact, behave. Technology affects social morays.

We see the affect of technology all around us today with cell phones, text messaging, the Internet, and we know just how much it can affect us and how much is possible because we have personal life experience backing us. We remember the days when "Pong" was huge. We remember the days when they were called "car phones" and only rich people had them. It makes it easier for us to project what may be possible.

For me, this is the most exciting part of reading science fiction!

Last year I spent half the year reading Peter Hamilton's Reality Dysfunction series; this year I am reading Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, and it is offering an interesting contrast in imaginative technology.

Not to diminish the stature of Isaac Asimov, but aside from the then ground-breaking notion of a galactic empire with ships traveling from star system to star system and other supernatural phenomena, it is barren in imaginative technology.

This makes sense, really, because he was writing this series in the early 1950s, a time we may characterize as the early, early stages of the technology revolution. It was also a time just after World War II, so much of the imaginative technology content is based in the technology that advanced from the war. Hamilton, in contrast, writing at a time when technology advances are commonplace and their impact on our daily lives prevalent (daily), it offers no surprise that his imaginative technology is so much more alive and thrilling.

Stewart Preserve

I did a series of geocaches in Stewart Preserve a few weeks ago. The weather forecast was calling for a cold day, with increasing wind and snow. I was in just such a mood, needing a hike, needing to be in the woods [looking for tupperware], that I threw caution aside and trekked out.

It was an enchanting hike. Here are a few photos taken from the day.

My Perfect Winter

This is my perfect winter:

It starts in late November with an inch or two of snow right around Thanksgiving. It doesn't stay around long, but it's enough to get you in the mood, to psyche you into winter.

Next we get a good six to eight inches in mid-December; you got it, right before Christmas. Now we're talking! White Christmas, who doesn't like that? Then a nice even flurry from Christmas through new year's day, not accumulating much, but enough to make the sky a regular white blur.

On about the second week of January, a pummeling. Bring it on! I'm talking consecutive snowstorms of one to two feet landing on us within as many weeks. It's winter, by God, and that should mean snow, so bring it!

Then a breather. Dig ourselves out. Shake ourselves off.

Take a couple weeks out of the fray, maybe even have some forty degree days, melt some of the piles down. But don't let the reprieve last too long. In early February, another dose of the same. Two feet! Let it snow hard all night at least once, bring us that magical morning with snow covering everything, make the world a winter wonderland.

By now, we might be getting a little tired of it, but let's just cycle through it one more time for good measure. We can't let winter slip by without us really being able to say "we had winter." So just at the end of February, say to celebrate a leap year, or the shortest month in the set, bring it down in buckets! It doesn't have to be a record breaker, but we have to know it's there.

By mid March, some snow is fine, but really we should start to seeing more regular forty degree days, even some fifty degree days. By mid April we should be seeing mid and upper fifties and some sixties. By mid May, we should see seventies.

May should be summer.

That is my perfect winter. So come on winter god. Let's see your stuff!