Wireless neighborhood

My wireless network is on the fritz, which is pretty sad given how new it is (less than six months).  It had a rocky start, which was followed by a month or two of blissful constant connection, and has now degenerated into only good reception punctuated by frequent drop outs.

What's changed, you ask?  Got me.

Anyway, as a result, I spend a lot of time looking at my wireless network configuration dialog.  Davis is there (it always is).  Tudor Systems is there, slower, but visible.  Maybe I see 1354 House, maybe not.  My own network is never there when I'm looking at the dialog.  Typically, the signal reappears minutes before my son wakes up.

Two things strike me as strange about this.  The first is why I am getting a better signal from the network across the street than I am from the one in the next room.  The second, is how our neighborhoods have changed;  I learned the next door neighbor's last name from their network.   Now, they're actually quite nice people, and I must admit that I knew them before I saw their network listed on my computer.  I've even joked that I should just pay to use their Internet connection since I can never connect to mine.  But isn't it peculiar how in this day of isolation from the people most physically near us we should have this kind of wireless introduction?

Finishing fiction

I finished reading Life of Pi last night.  I stayed up way past my bedtime to do so, and after I put the book down I concluded that one should never finish a good book just before it's time to go to sleep.

This is especially true with fiction, which often doubles its pace in the final chapters, turning everything you've absorbed in great detail upside down at the last second.  I can remember reading The Princess Bride
for the first time as a 14 year old, crying with anger at the turn of  events in the epilogue (this part was left out of the movie, by the way).  Of course, that's the sign of a good book, one that leaves you mulling over everything you read in great detail to figure out some piece that is revealed to you in the end that requires revisiting everything you read before before you can know what it means.

Tunnel wonder

I made a tunnel out of a box for my son to play with.  He loves it.  I need do nothing more than look at him from the other side for him to drop whatever he is doing to crawl through the box.  In fact, anything that is remotely tunnel-like will get his attention: the previously forgotten play gym, someone's legs, the dining table (or more likely, the dining chairs).

I must admit a certain affinity for tunnels myself.  As a child I always enjoyed driving through the tunnel from Detroit to Windsor; it never bothered me that we were going under a large body of water to do so.  On the bus to summer camp we always held our hands up to the roof going under a particularly long and dark tunnel-like bridge.  And I still enjoy crawling under the dining table with my son.

This affinity is clearly present from a young age, so what is it about tunnels that makes them so inviting?

Is the devil in the details?

My son had his first birthday party last weekend and he received the usual assortment of toys, books, and clothes that you would expect for a 1 year old.  Along with these came the packaging, which every parent knows, is at least as interesting as the contents for the first few days, which is how I came to be examining an old shoe box this morning.

The shoe box in question is red, with a white silhouette of a puma on top and bottom.  It clearly contained a pair of athletic shoes at one stage, but now was being used to teach the concepts of "in the box" and "out of the box".  What caught my attention this morning was the small writing on the end of the box: "Average contents: 2"

What could they possibly have meant by that?  Surely, their intention was that the box would contain exactly two shoes until it got into the end user's hands and after that they would relinquish concern for the contents.   As a purchaser of shoes, I would be extraordinarily annoyed if my new box of shoes contained one shoe or, even worse, three pickles.  Nevertheless, it did pique my curiosity, and having nothing else to do as my son insisted I sit with him while he played with his new Duplo, I read on.

On the end of the box covered by the aforementioned label, are five more icons: a no battery image (do shoes require batteries these days?), a no swimming image, an image showing a running person moving towards a door with the label "escape", a warning that products may differ from the images shown (under a drawing of a wingtip), and and icon saying that shoes can only be sold in Paris!  (Oops, that must have been my sleep deprived eyes.  Upon further inspection, I see that it actually said they can only be sold in pairs, hence the "Average Contents: 2").

It goes on.  Most of the stuff isn't worth mentioning (even the stuff I've already mentioned).  I did like the list of suggestions for recycling, however:

1. Doll house
2. Place to store stuff you should have thrown out by now
3. Place to store photos you can't store on your hard disk

What gets me is this: Puma spent a lot of money employing someone to spend a lot of time to come up with this rubbish, most of which is seen only by the consumer after he has purchased the product and then probably not even then unless he is that tired of watching his child play with his new Duplo. 

Which makes me wonder how much the shoes cost?

Children's Books

My son is about a year old.  Every night, as part of the bed time ritual prescribed by all of the child rearing "experts", we read him two or three books.  At this rate, one can go through a lot of books.

Now the first thing that I have to say about children's books is that they are absurdly expensive: "A dollar a word" as one friend and parent said to us.  Now, it's not really that bad.  They're probably closer to $0.20/word, and some of them may even go less than $0.04/word.  Still, can you imagine paying that rate for your typical novel?  I've mostly gotten over this.  If I find a really good children's book, I will simply ignore the price tag as I take it to the register and pay for it with my credit card so I don't ever have to acknowledge the actual cost.

My real issue with children's books is that on the whole, they are so bad.  They insult the intelligence of the readers (both the children and their parents) by sloppily throwing together pictures and a few uninspiring notes with little semblance of a story.  At the risk of committing a bit of copyright infringement I'll give you an example, the complete text of one of the board books we own:

Baby bunnies enjoy an early morning wash.
Heads down, tails up! Bunnies drink their breakfast milk.
One, two, three... Hide and seek is fun to play.
One young rabbit learns how to hop.
Cuddle up, it's time for bed.  Goodnight!

Now, with the exception of an old college mate of mine who would have liked the cute pictures of bunnies, I can't see how anyone could enjoy reading this book once, let alone the hundreds of times a parent can expect to read each book they own.  That's why when my son decided he liked to use this book as a teething ring I didn't discourage him until the pages started to fuse together and I started to worry about what kinds of glue he might be ingesting.

Fortunately, there are a few stars that shine through the dark, books with nice stories, clever rhymes, intelligent words, and good illustrations.  They include words like "cavort" and "rapscallion".  A few I've discovered so far include "Slinky Malinky", "Harry Maclary and Zachary Quack", "Edward the Emu", "Edwina the Emu", "Olga the Brolga", "The Very Hungry Caterpillar", "Barnyard Dance", and "But Not the Hippopotamus" (who can resist a story about a hippopotamus?  It's just a fun word to say - try it).

Have you read these books?  Do you have other suggestions or remember favorites from your own early childhood?

By the way, if you're ever giving a children's book as a present to a young child, make sure it is a board book, otherwise it will either be torn and crinkled or stored away to save it from that fate.  I'm not sure at what age this no longer applies, but certainly beyond 1 year.

Couldn't put it down

I've just finished reading Or I'll Dress You In Mourning, the biography of Manuel Benítez, El Cordobés, the bullfighter I mentioned in a previous post.  It didn't take me long to read it (it has actually taken me longer to get around to writing the review).  Plainly said: this was one of the most compelling books I have ever read.  I could hardly put it down (only a year of sleepless nights with an infant was enough to get me to turn the light out each night).

This book tells the story of Manuel Benítez, a peasant born on the eve of the Spanish revolution.  He grew up in a region with only three landholders who paid next to nothing to the local field hands, and the promise of a socialist republic was a popular concept.  His father was quick to join the socialist militia when the fighting started and was imprisoned until his death when the war finally ended.  His mother died quickly after a brief illness and he and his siblings were left to be raised by his oldest sister.  Determined to become a bullfighter like most other peasant boys, he demonstrated a dedication to his cause that few people have, until he finally broke into the big time at an age when many bullfighters are considered washed up.

Despite knowing the fate of El Cordobés, which you can quickly gather from the captions on the collection of pictures, I found it difficult to put the book down for want of knowing what would happen next.  The only disappointment is that the book ends in 1964, at the start of his illustrious career that still continues, 40 years later!

Drowning in the suburban mall

I've sunk to new lows.  Yesterday I made a trip to our nearby suburban mall.  In four years of living at this address, I've only visited there twice, both times in the past few months.


It's supposed to be the best of the malls in Melbourne (there are five or six around the suburbs).  A friend of mine, shocked when I told her I'd never been there, said she'd drive across town to go to "Chaddy", as it is known in the local vernacular.  But on my first visit to Chaddy I was struck by just how similar it was to the shops in the city, a place where I have been blessed with a few too many pointless lunch hours.


On this recent visit the parking lot was filled to the outer reaches and the halls were packed with meandering hoards of people not quite sure why they were there.  They were wandering the mall to spend their time more than their money, in pursuit of a purchase to take home as a souvenir.


One of the nice things about living in a moderately large city (no comments from the NYC folks, please) is that the local shopping areas are generally easier to get to than the mall, and many of them contain a great selection of stores, making malls mostly irrelevant for those of us shopping out of need (or at least perceived need).  But in the mall, the marketer rules.  Things are not sold because they will be useful, but because the masses are an easy target in our time of plenty.  We live in a disposable society (I've said it before); things are produced to last only a few uses, at best, and we purchase as if we plan to use things only a few times.  Nothing can be repaired for less than it costs to purchase a replacement.  This behavior is not limited to our purchases, either, but that is a topic for another day.


I'm happy to say that the only thing I purchased during my visit is something I've been meaning to get for months but couldn't find at the local shops.  I suppose that explains my compulsion yesterday to go there.  It is a sad statement for me however, because it was a replacement for something that still works reasonably well.

Cloth vs. disposable?

It's a very common question, but it almost seems rhetorical these days: will you put your baby in cloth or disposable nappies (aka diapers)?  We live in a disposable culture, so it's hardly surprising that the vast majority of people (well, Americans and Australians anyway) choose to use disposable nappies without a second thought.  The question also implies that one must use one or the other, ignoring the possibility that it might make sense to use cloth during the day and disposables at night.

The strange thing is that when you choose to use cloth nappies for your baby, even when you don't do it full time, you seem to be joining a bit of a fraternity (well, more likely a sorority).  Since there are about 45,000 different cloth nappy products to choose from, none of which are carried in your local supermarket for examination, if you aren't careful you can end up spending hours reading about them on-line, where you will also end up reading a list of reasons why cloth nappies are better than disposable.  And the list will inevitably argue that the time spent cleaning cloth nappies is marginal and actually not as much as having to go to the store to purchase disposables all the time.

Sure, if you're disorganized, you may find yourself making an occasional trip to the store to get an emergency supply, but most people would buy the nappies at the supermarket when they do their weekly shop.  How can the 60 seconds it takes me to walk down the nappy aisle while I'm at the supermarket once a month possibly compare to the time spent on three extra loads of washing, drying, and folding I do each week to keep my 1 year old in cloth nappies during his waking hours.

What's happened to El Cordobés?

When I was in high school I had the fortune to meet Manuel Benítez (El Cordobés), one of the most famous bullfighters of the 20th century.  My family had an extravagant and festive dinner with him and his wife where we were entertained by his overwhelming energy and disregard for convention as he played the bull through the waiters napkins to the Paso Doble ringing out from the piano.  At the end of the meal, we parted ways, with contact details scribbled on a scrap of paper that has long since been lost.

I am now reading the biography of El Cordobés (Or I'll Dress You in Mourning, which I'll review after I've finished).  The book was written over thirty years ago and so does not cover most of his life.  After reading the details of his youth growing up in Francoist Spain, I can't help but wonder what has happened to him.

I did a little searching on the web (as you do) and found surprisingly little current news.  For someone so famous (in Spain) I thought there would be the occasional newspaper article in the past few years mentioning him, but not that I could find.  Nor could I find any mention of his death.  In fact, the stub article in wikipedia claims he's still alive.  A little further digging and it turns out he gave up retirement and was in the ring (in Spanish) as recently as 2004 (at the age of 68!).

His predecessor, Manolete, died in the bullring not long after coming back from retirement to redeem his name after the public turned against him for retiring.  It seems that anyone who makes it as a bullfighter (and a lot of people who tried but didn't succeed) are destined to die in the ring.

I'd be interested to know more about his recent life, if anyone finds anything (or who reads Spanish better than I and finds Spanish news about him).