Author: Lowell

It’s amazing what L can do with a mouse and an online game that presupposes a relatively sophisticated knowledge of the alphabet. He can move characters through alphabet mazes and he can recognize an object on the screen and identify the letter “it begins with”. If his Mom and Dad let him, he’d be at it all day.

L is tall, really tall.

L had a welcome-to-the-real-world moment yesterday. A few weeks ago, when I picked him up from the nursery, I was told by one of the staffers that L had had some trouble sharing that day. This prompted a “lecture” from his parents. L took it to heart, and he did a better job of sharing his toys the next few weeks. Yesterday, when I went to pick him up from the nursery, he wasn’t there. He was playing by himself–accompanied by a staffer, of course–in a room across the hall. Even though he had done his best to apply the sharing concept, asking other children if they would be willing to share their toys with him instead of just taking their toys without asking, another boy hadn’t done the same; he had come up to L and taken his toy away from him. Apparently, L had promptly left the room, gone across the hall, and collapsed crying into the arms of one of the staffers who had followed him there. Life’s tough. You do your best to abide by the rules and someone else comes along and takes advantage of you. Welcome to the real world.

Did I mention this? L is tall.

Even though I’m away during the day, I often have work to do in the evening. L gets a bit of Dad-time in after supper, but eventually I pull out a paper or my computer and sit down to do some reading, writing, or lecture prep. If it were up to L, this would never happen; we would wrestle or play hide and seek till well past his bedtime. So what does he do? He’ll stop by occasionally to tickle feet, crawl up on the couch and stick a finger in an ear, or land a really wet kiss on the nose. This makes him kind of hard to ignore and, if he persists long enough, he usually gets exactly the reaction he’s looking for. I think I’m being manipulated…though I’m not sure I mind that much.

Blockbuster shipped us The Soloist the other day. Great movie! It’s based on a true story about a cellist who dropped out of Juilliard because he was beginning to suffer from schizophrenia. (For those of you who don’t know, Juilliard is a world-famous music school in New York.) He ends up living on the street in Los Angelos, where a columnist for a local paper runs into him. Both Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr. are fabulous in the movie, and the movie does a great job of revealing the complexities involved with trying to help a homeless person suffering from mental illness.

Lowell and Pam rating: All thumbs up!

I’m about ready to be done with grad school, but I have a small problem: I don’t have a completed dissertation yet. That’s why I’m looking to subcontract. Anyone want to earn some money by writing my dissertation for me? If so, send me a sample of your work. Perhaps you already have some composed dissertations lying around and are wondering if one of them would be suitable. I’m looking for something that’s about 100-150 pages in length and explores one or more of the following topics: reflexive and self-locating thought, awareness of the self, or the metaphysics and ontology of the self.

I heard an interesting science piece about crows on NPR this morning. Apparently, you really don’t want to get on their bad side. You can listen to it here.