Go forth and burn ants with your magnifying glass and tings...

I came across a speaker at TED this week that was refreshing. His name is Gever Tulley, and he and his partner, Julie Spiegler, founded a school in the US that is called 'Tinkering School'
Now the bit about this that is refreshing is that Gever reckons that kids need to be allowed to play with things...that are dangerous!

Fact is, if you want your kids to make the kinds of connections that constitute creative thinking... sooner or later you pretty much HAVE to leave them in charge of things that have sharp bits. Sometimes you need to leave them in charge of things with sharp bits that have motors on them... (moving sharp bits!). I mean, it's hard to cut things without some kind of saw.

Tulley has just published a book called '50 dangerous things that every kid should do' or something like that. It's a mark of our times that such a book should be considered revelationary. It includes such things as putting a 9v battery on your tongue!..(Whoa there cowboy! Ain't that goin' just a bit too far?) and (better) 'Own a pocket knife', 'Throw a spear', 'Deconstruct an appliance', 'Drive a car', Play with Fire, 'Walk on a roof', 'Make a catapult', 'make a tin helmet from a lampshade and go out in a hail storm' etc.

While I do heartily applaud this book, (and it seems to be set to be a best seller...oh why didn't I write it?)... it makes me think that we really should be hanging our collective heads in shame that a book like this was ever even required! What happened?

Not that long ago kids were doing all this stuff anyway! Now they need a book, or more precisely their parents need a book that says it's OK for us to let our kids do things that are dangerous. Not only that, but it's OK for us to leave our kids to just tinker with stuff, for no reason at all...except for the joy of it. Actually, I say WE, but really I should point out that Amazon.co.uk don't stock it... only the US Amazon have it. (Same as the US have a different (Better) Kindle than the rest of the world have access to. Hmmm) But I digress.

So as part of my appreciation, I guided Carly in mending her puncture today. She was well chuffed...and we sorted her brakes at the same time. She had no idea that THAT was what the otherwise utterly useless talcum powder in the bathroom cupboard is for! (Actually I've got a 20kg bag of it... without scent. I use it in filler) Stuff the PlayStation and virtual reality! To quote the infamous Crocadile Dundee; 'That's not a knife... THAT's a knife!'.

Have you seen that new toy on the market? It's a 'dinosaur' skeleton thingy (plastic) with some kind of plaster cast around it. Kids are supposed to 'dig' the bones out of the plaster! ...and then what? Presumably, since they're not allowed a stick, or a hammer, or a knife, or heaven forbid.. a chisel, it's not immediately apparent WHAT they're supposed to 'excavate' with! I suppose it probably comes with a disposable plastic hammer and rubber chisel... so that it's something like as hard to get the plaster off the plastic bones as it would be to get the real thing out of granite! At what point are we going to STOP this madness and re-engage our children with the REAL world? Here's a really well written label that Gever Tulley wrote and published on the Make.com website a while ago: (click the image to zoom in)



On the subject of signs: Last week I went for an interview with Greenpeace, didn't get it, but whilst I was up town, I saw a sign that was asking for people to donate blood. I thought 'Hell, why not!' and went in. I half expected the receptionist to gush at me about what a wonderful person I am to consider giving some of my own blood, it is after all vintage stuff now-a-days, but she just told me, matter of fact to read through a card that had a list of things that might prevent me from being a suitable donor. It started off with all the stuff you'd expect, like 'have you engaged in any brown nosing lately' (something like that anyway) and 'have you been taking any drugs, prescribed or recreational' (or something like that) and then.... AND THEN...it said, 'Have you lived in the UK anytime between (something like) 1997 and 2003?' So I explained that I was a Britisher...and that I had been living there during the said time... to which she said (something like) 'Well piss off then, we don't want your stinky MAD COW infected corpuscles in here... thank you very much....SIR'

Bloody convicts!

Advertising and the devil

Righto,
those of you who've been coming here for yonks will notice that there are advertisements on the blog today!

Yueck!

I've allowed them on because I've been reading that people actually click on them and that you can get a bob or two from that.

Now under normal circumstances I'd cock a snook at all that. I really don't like being advertised to myself, but as we are currently challenged in the cash flow dept, I thought I'd overlook my principalities for a while.

So go right ahead and click whatever they put up here on the right, and below... whether its for weight loss, weight gain, breast shaping, reduction, viewing or whatever.

Actually, I HAVE put some filters on, but they don't allow you to filter ALL the crappy ads out, so we'll have to wait and see.

Sorry n'nat.

Screen-agers

When the kids got a Playstation from Nanna at Christmas, I was happy for them – despite my feelings about computer games, borne from experience of Josh’s transformation into a zombie like snotty kid when he had one. I even entered into the spirit of the thing, playing with considerable enjoyment (for a while) a game where Homer Simpson drives around a street circuit in cars that he’s stopped and commandeered, hitting innocent fictional others whose cries of ‘idiot’ are as water to a ducks back for Homer. He, for reasons unclear, has a feature that allows him to go up to someone and kick the bejesus out of them. The game is called ‘Hit and Run’.

The question is; do the game manufacturers make these games because they know that the average gamer contains an inner git, or does the average gamer contain an inner git because the game manufactures make this sort of game available?

OK, I didn’t feel any difference when I next got into my car… not for one moment did I consider running down any innocent pedestrians or kicking them for that matter. So should I be worried? Probably not.

But there’s still the fact that playing these games has a weird effect on the ability of your child to engage in polite and considerate interaction with other flesh and blood characters that are external to the game, i.e. the rest of the family. And their inability to do this seems to be in proportion to the amount of time you leave them exposed to the machine. Left to their own devices, they’ll sit there for hours…caught up with it.

But the games engender some kind of physical loading, like adrenalin being increased, preparing them for a fight/flight response to something, and because it requires sitting still, what comes out is noxious behaviour.

Couple this with Matilda’s easy propensity to cross that line when she forgets herself, and Phoebe’s increasing skill in pushing her over it, and you have a ‘tricky’ situation.

But wait, there’s more! The local kids love it too! Especially as we have the facility to allow four players on some of the games! Having four or more pumped up girls inside the house, with all the attendant noise, (meaning that they also turn up the volume on the TV) is, well lets just say I can think of better places for them to be, and the places become less and less savoury the longer they’re inside the house playing this machine. I don’t think it’s going too far to say that having one of these in the house is like keeping a baby elephant in your kitchen. Essentially innocent, attractive to kids, but at the end of the day the house will never be big enough.

I have exported myself to the garage to work. I feel like I’m in involuntary exile.

So yesterday to loud complaint, I muted the TV mid game to suggest to the assembled gaggle that if they wanted to, Daile and I could take them and their bicycles down to Beenleigh to the BMX park and they could get some of that adrenalin out of their systems. They loved the idea, and forgave me for the intrusion…phew!

I didn’t take any pics unfortunately, but imagine the sight of ten bicycles strapped onto my ute, along with a compressor and line, tools, etc. The result was palpable. All the noise didn’t seem so wrong. In fact it felt like it was right! They belted around this track, which has lots of bumps and drops that get your heart racing. The difference of course is that you ARE racing, and it’s all GOOD adrenalin. They played really sweetly and nicely for several hours, discovering also that there was a pond with tadpoles in that they could catch with their bare hands! We returned at dusk, via the chip shop, had a few rounds of ‘Pass the bomb’ which got them all cranked up again, and a couple of rounds of ‘Twister’ which gave them a physical outlet… and then they were inexplicably invited to Tracy’s for a sleepover…!

Wooohoooo! So all of them trooped off there, and Daile and I actually got some quality time!

That was our Sunday…how was yours?

Ho ho ho

It's been raining this last couple of days, especially last night. This is good for the plants of course, but it's been muggy as hell too. Our brown back garden has picked up a little colour lately which is about time...

I'm feeling glad that the main part of Christmas is now over, and that we're getting closer to a more normal state of things. There's something manic about Christmas that never quite improves, and this year was no different despite our intentions. Daile had everything wrapped in time, and had made lots of nice things to eat. The gargoyles had made some things too, and we were all decorated as far as we went. Then the fridge broke!

I read an interesting thing in a book about why inventions fail a couple of weeks ago that talked about an advert for IBM that heralded the 'intelligent' fridge. In this ad, a doorbell goes and is answered by a quizzical housewife. The man at the door says 'I've come to mend your fridge!' She says that 'It's not broken'... he says 'It's about to break!' The ad explains how fridges will be able to know when a part is about to break and call the engineer, how they' ll also be able to monitor their contents via code readers and order replacements on line etc. It's another one of those silly things that people envisaged for our future, like living on space stations and eating pills instead of food etc. The book goes on to say that the glaring hole in the plan was that fridges are so incredibly reliable that they only break on average every 20 years! I was thinking about this as I surveyed the slowly warming contents of our fridge (just out of warranty). Luckily, we have the old thing in the garage that Tilda and I were able to transfer everything into. The fixers want to charge us $88 dollars to pitch up, and then $100 per hour pro-rata plus parts after that! I mean its almost as if they're doing something complicated! Its a fridge!

Then the internet stopped working! I had to spend 40 minutes on the phone to Telstra so that they could confirm this for me... and then they suggested that I pay for a new router even though this one is still under warranty, because they 'don't know' whether its the router or their system.

Don't y just love it?

Anyway, we're still off line officially, and using my little usb router that costs about 10 times as much to run. Needless to say this will be at our expense in order that Telstra's massive profits are not adversely affected by their own performance eh!

The girls and their friends in the street put on a panto for Christmas. It was called 'The Disaster on Christmas Eve' They spent several productive and fevered days making all kinds of props, before they were willing to let me cajole them into actually writing the script.





In the event, they couldn't find half of the props, couldn't remember their lines, couldn't find the back drops, etc. But all the various parents were in attendance, and there were pre and post performance drinks and interesting buns, provided by the girls collective. It was actually very funny, a comedy by mistake if you know what I mean. We were very proud of them all.







They were making loads of different things in the run up to the big day... Here's a sequence of pics of one of the thing Matilda made (with a little help for the base). The glass is from the local bargain store. I think it's an improvement on the commercial variety don't you?















On Christmas day itself we went over to Wayne and Dettes, and had a wonderful spread of food. It was very hot, but very chilled... if you know what I mean!



Back row from left: Carlene, Lee, Macca, Andrew, Judy, Iggy (Ian)
then; Sandra, Jim, Leanne, The most gorgeous woman in the world (my wife of course!), Caitlin, Maddy
then; Luis, Dette, Feeb, Lil, Wayne,
then: Me, Johnny jetwash, Tild.

All in the spirit of Christmas?

Remember it all started with this little stable... you know, and then the marketing boys got hold of it.

But at least it's got some snow there - like it did in Nazareth eh? It's a significant part of the idea of Christmas isn't it. So where did that come from? I mean at what point did the whole thing become about reindeer, and somehow be linked to a nativity thing?

Over here, the spirit of Christmas is probably Vodka or Gin. It doesn't have the same kind of feel as it does in Europe, and I imagine the US. But it's ALL pretty much a fabricated thing, like Mothers day, Fathers day, Great Auntie Ethel's day or what ever day they happen to be pushing.

Last weekend, presumably with the intention of getting into the spirit of Christmas, a young couple went to a party further down our street. They got pissed (or at least he did) and then proceeded to have a row. She left, he followed and by the time they'd got to the bit of the street outside our house, it was sounding like she was going to get hurt. Daile, calling me as she went out, interceded and I went out to make sure she was OK. There were tears from him, threats of suicide from him, histrionics from him, and feigned violence from him. Daile got the girl in her car and took her home. I stayed and managed to avoid getting hit, unlike our letter box which he kicked and broke at the point that it came out of it's concrete base whilst telling me that I'm a faggot! 'Nothing wrong with that love' I crooned at him as he swayed back towards the party...

After Daile got back, we tried to justify our behaviour to ourselves. We wondered why it was only us that had done anything. Before they got to us, they'd walked screaming past lots of houses. 3 doors up from us lives a police man... where was he? Opposite from us there is a house that MUST have heard. But only Daile and I responded, without thought for our own safety. Are we stupid?

The following day, the man from over the road came over. He said that if we needed to press charges for damage to our car (which the guy had kicked) or our letter box, he'd seen it all and could back us up. He explained that had something happened, he'd have been straight out to help. We thought how nice that he'd stayed behind his curtains at the time, whilst I faced the drunk (but very fit) boy alone. Today Daile had a conversation with another neighbour (about four houses further up the street) and She said that they'd seen the whole thing too, and so had the police man! Where were they then?

So THAT's what they mean by neighbourhood watch here! Ha ha... or should that be Ho Ho?