Lift Up Your Hearts!

Kingdom of Children: Culture and Controversy in the Homeschooling Movement (Princeton Studies in Cultural Sociology), by Mitchell Stevens (Princeton University Press, 2001)

I've forgotten what led me to find Kingdom of Children, but from the reviews on amazon.com I knew I had to read it.  I have been trying to explain to our own family some of the homeschooling controversies of the late 80's and early 90's, and why I emerged with prejudices against certain people and organizations they are even now encountering, such as the Home School Legal Defense Association, even though we were members, and Josh Harris—though the latter is a case of visiting the sins of the father on the son, which I realize is unfair.  If they want to understand, this book would be a good starting point.  They won't get enough information to know much of the whys and wherefors of my concerns—the author is too objective, too nice for that—but they will get a general picture of the history of the era.

As anyone who has read my other reviews will know, I frequently find the beginnings of books frustrating but by the end find they have redeemed themselves—or at least I've found something of value worth keeping, even if it's not the main thrust of the book.  Kingdom of Children is in many ways the opposite.  As Stevens was setting the historical background, I was impressed with his research and his objective understanding of the complexities of the homeschooling world in those days.  If he had stopped there, I would have recommended the book unreservedly.  But Stevens is not a historian, he's a sociologist, and I found the sociological aspects of the book boring and even ludicrous in places.

His idea that homeschooling of all forms represents a peculiar emphasis on the importance of individual souls (rather than the collective "society," I assume) is a bit frightening, and his view that it requires an enormous sacrifice betrays a complete lack of understanding of the most important part of the movement—and of parenting in general.  The author seems truly mystified as to why families would sacrifice extra income, and women their "careers," to be at home rearing their children at all, much less for the many years required by homeschooling.  He talks about the modern emphasis on "self," and extends that to increased parental emphasis on the importance of tuning a child's education to his individual needs, rather than accepting a collective approach to education.  He views the renewed emphasis among some people on the importance of homemaking and childrearing as women's desperate attempts to console themselves for the loss of their careers and "liberation."

In other words, he has no clue. 

On the one hand, I was happy to read through his history and recognize the issues and debates that troubled us in those years, especially the HR6 controversy.  I could recognize myself and others; I knew most of the names and movements.  As I had hoped, he explains the issues and sequences of events better than I could.  I was disappointed, however, to see that he has missed a large segment of the picture.

I suppose it is natural for a sociologist to view people through the lens of the groups with which they align themselves.  I was happy to see that he recognizes considerable overlap between the two major branches of homeschooling in those days, which he calls "the inclusives" and "the believers."  What he fails to appreciate, however, is the many homeschoolers who were not "joiners," but preferred to take ideas from all factions and craft their own way without finding it necessary to give allegiance to a particular view or organization.  He does make it abundantly clear that this is not the road to political power, and I'm not downplaying the significance of politics and power in our lives.  As Pericles said, "Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you."  However, I have deep suspicians that politcal power usually comes at the expense of family power, and equally that family power is the more important of the two. 

And that's a distinction that transcends any particular educational choice.

Our laptop has been used in a docking station for months, and today I took it out to use it independently.  No go.  I could not log on.  Do you have any idea how maddening it is when Windows keeps asking, "Did you forget your password?" when you know for certain you did not?

I tried all the obvious things—CapsLock on?  NumLock on?  Making sure they were both off had no effect; I still couldn't log on.  I'm writing the saga so that (1) I won't forget, and (2) it might help someone else as clueless as me.

Next step:  put it back in the docking station.  Worked fine.  (See, I told you I didn't forget the password.)  Took it out again.  Didn't work.

Tried the old Ctrl-Alt-Del twice to get the old-fashioned logon screen.  Still didn't work, but this enabled me to type into the username blank and actually see what I was typing, instead of a bunch of asterisks.  Turns out one of my password characters is a letter on the number pad part of the keyboard, and even though the light indicated that NumLock was off, the keyboard was producing numbers, not letters.

Okay, problem diagnosed.  Now what?  A Google search, of course.  The first suggestions were to take the keyboard apart and clean it.  Not only was I not up for that, but I didn't have high expectations of it working, since the key obviously toggled the indicator light on and off—just not the actual function.

The next several suggestions were to meddle with the BIOS.  I don't think so!

Finally, I found one that said to hold the shift key down while pressing and releasing the NumLock key.  Presto!  Problem solved.  I don't know what it actually did, but it worked, and for the moment  that's good enough for me.  I hope writing the story here eventually helps someone else.

UPDATE:  Thanks to Stephan's suggestion, I now have a permanent solution rather than one that has to be renewed every time I reboot:  At the user login prompt, type Shift/NumLock, then turn the machine off before doing anything else.

Back in the 70's I sometimes thought computing was half voodoo.  Now it's up to 90%.

I need Porter.

I'm not in this case referring to the fact that he has a good job and my employable skills are a quarter century out of date.

Nor to the fact that when I say I'd be lost without him, I mean that literally.  Oh, I can navigate pretty well and even find my car in the parking lot if I put my mind to it.  The trouble is, my mind is usually elsewhere entirely.

Nor because it's wonderful to have someone around who can work on the roof without getting all faint-hearted and weak-kneed.

I'm not even talking about emotional support; the security of knowing someone cares if I'm late coming home; arms to comfort and a shoulder to cry on; tender words of respect and encouragement; a friendly presence in the house, and on the other side of the bed.

Not even love.

I love him for all of these, but what I really need Porter for his efforts to pull me out of my ruts.  In a grumpier mood I call these distractions.

Inspired by my daughter's mother-in-law (there must be a better way to say that), I'm making a list of things I want to do before I die.  This is an interesting exercise, though like most forms of exercise better started at an earlier age. But while writing the list is a new idea, I've had an unwritten, mental list for years that tends to consume my life.  "Workaholic" is not a term usually used to describe someone whose last paycheck was 27 years ago, but it's not inappropriate.  When you're over 50 and the list of what you want to do before you die keeps getting longer, a feeling of urgency is justified.

Recently, Porter attended a class that kept him out of town for two weeks.  Certainly I missed him!  But the time was not without advantages.  Figuring eight hours for sleep, and another for meals, phone calls, and miscellaneous, that left me with a 15-hour work day!

I cut my meals down to two a day, which turned out to be remarkably easy.  People talk about skipping breakfast and/or lunch, but I've never been able to do that without significant sacrifice.  I'm always hungry for breakfast and lunch.  But with no one to cook for, I learned that skipping dinner is a piece of cake.  (Figuratively speaking, of course.)  By eating a late lunch I discovered the remarkable liberation of finishing the final meal of the day and still having seven or eight hours before bedtime—what's normally considered a full work day.

Except for church on Sunday, the only time I left home was as part of my exercise routine.  It being summertime, most of my away-from-home commitments were curtailed, and best of all I did absolutely no shopping.

Fifteen hours a day of work.  I completed two major projects, made significant progress on several others, and developed and established some important personal habits.  Yet I had more energy than usual at the end of the day, not less.  It was utter bliss.

It was also a fool's paradise.  It only worked because everything else worked.  Porter's salary continued to be paid, no appliances broke down, I stayed healthy, there were no family crises to deal with, no hurricanes came our way; there were none of the events—happy or sad—in which being alone is really hard.  I'm deeply grateful.

Even in the absence of problems, however, it's not a sustainable lifestyle.  One cannot just write; one must take time out to live life and thus have something to write about.  Creating photo albums is not possible without the events that make up the photos.  (Though, frankly, my backlog is of sufficient size to take me well into old age, I fear.)  Most of all, the point of most of my projects is to share with or benefit other people in some way, so cutting myself off from those very people to work on the projects makes only short-term, occasional sense.  (Not that I was cut off during those two weeks, being blessed with e-mail, inexpensive phone service, and friends and family who make a point of keeping in contact.  Porter calls at least once, often twice a day when he is on the road, God bless him!  That's why I can spend two weeks alone without being in the least lonely.)

Enter Porter.  As far as I can tell, his primary love language is Quality Time.  He loves to do things, he loves to do things together, and he particularly loves doing things that involve going somewhere away from home.  All of which Interrupts My Work.

It also makes my work worthwhile, so I recognize it as a gift and a blessing.  There's a reason God designed us to require other people in our lives.  It doesn't have to be a husband; in fact, we really need many kinds and sorts of people.  But a spouse is definitely an asset in this context.

Which brings me to the other point of this post:  The Concert Surprise.  We're regular patrons of the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra, but we didn't sign up for their Sounds of Summer series this year because of our irregular schedule.  When he discovered that we would actually be home for one recently, Porter wanted to go.

Sounds Of Summer II
Italia “La Più Bella”
Thursday, July 5, 2007 7:00 PM
Created by Daniel Flick

This musical feast is sure to satisfy the tastes of all Italian Music Lovers. Works of the classic Italian masters, Corelli, Tartini, Vivaldi, and Boccherini, are accompanied by Italian folk music favorites ranging in flavor from “la Sole alla Luna” or as we say in English, from “the Sun to The Moon.” These works are brought to life on traditional Italian instruments including Mandolin, Accordion, Classical Guitar, String Quartet and Soprano.

It sounded interesting, but had I been alone I would not have attended.  Too many other projects would have taken higher priority.  But I went, because anything done with Porter automatically acquires very high priority along with considerably increased interest.

Yes, it was an enjoyable concert.  But the part that was the most fun was opening up the program to discover that one of the two above-mentioned Sopranos was our friend, Ashley Locheed!  We've been enjoying Ashley's performances since she was a freshman in college, but lately her career path has taken her into venues we don't usually frequent and hours at which we'd rather be asleep, so this was a treat.

It pays to get out of the house every once in a while.

Although I find highly objectionable the way most laboring mothers and their newborns are treated in America today, I'm still in favor of most newborn screening.  It did hurt to hear my grandchildren's cries as they received the heel stick required to get blood for the testing, but it was over quickly and their mommy was able to soothe them immediately.  The advantage of discovering or ruling out certain devastating, but treatable, conditions is worth the small trauma.  I'm not happy about the idea that such screening is often mandatory, but the idea itself is a good one.

The article includes this comment:

The conditions involved in newborn screening are rare, but can be very severe. These tests are important because each of the 29 conditions on the March of Dimes list is either curable or highly treatable as long as it is found within 48 hours after birth.

Yet if you follow the link to see what they have to say about Pennsylvania, you'll find the following:

Screening Requirements
Required by law on all infants, with a second test required if initial screen is done prior to 36 hrs.

It's not news to most of my readers that I loathe shopping.

Shopping at amazon.com isn't so bad, because (1) I can take all the time I want to make up my mind without making multiple trips to the store, (2) no sales clerk ever hassles me, and most of all (3) I'm buying books. I'd rather buy a book in a local store where I can actually hold it in my hands and get to know it better first. A bookstore is one of the very few shops where I can enjoy browsing, and maybe coming upon something good I didn't know about before I walked in. But the sad truth is that bookstores rarely have what I'm looking to purchase, and what good does it do for the clerk to cheerily assure me he'd be happy to order the book for me? I can do that myself—and usually do.

Shopping at Whole Foods can be a treat, too. I think that's about it, though.

Basically, I find most stores to be creepy. The constant assault on my senses from all the attempts to get customers to buy, buy, buy—not to mention the almost ubiquitous piped-in music, often at objectionably high volumes—makes me want to get the job done and out as fast as possible. Sometimes the sheer volume of choice—and, let's face it, the sheer volume of junk—makes my skin crawl. I know; I'm weird. Most people seem to enjoy the experience.

My wardrobe (or lack thereof) is sufficient evidence of how much I like to go shopping for clothes. Furniture? Our house is generally furnished in Generous Relative Hand-me-down Style—not because we can't afford anything else, but because anything else would require actual shopping.

Appliances? That's my current nemesis. I'm the kind of person who would rather make toast in the oven than replace the toaster oven that finally gave out after many years of good service. I lived for three years without a mixer rather than shop for a new one; the only reason I have one now is that Janet and Porter took matters into their own hands and bought me one for Christmas. Really, mixing things by hand—even egg whites—is much easier than shopping.

Our refrigerator was bought used for our tenants when we rented out the house while we were in Boston. It's been making funny noises for years. The stove and the freezer are working fine, but I'm steeling myself for the day they must be replaced, because they're each 30 years old, and would be considerably harder than a mixer to live without. The dishwasher doesn't owe us anything, because it's about 20 years old, but it hasn't cleaned very well since we returned from Boston.  Must be the tenants' fault.

So we've been looking at appliances. I really wouldn't mind shopping if I could find something I liked! But all the reviews are at best mixed, and often negative. Large appliances are now expected to last five or at most ten years, not thirty. Toaster ovens of all sorts have a disconcerting tendency to burst into flames at random times, even when not in use.

We paid $26 to join the online version of Consumer Reports, but so far have been disappointed. The dishwashers they reviewed are mostly not the ones I find available, and in any case their results are skewed by giving an unreasonably high priority to how quiet the machine runs. Quiet is good, but nowhere near as important as effective, efficient, and convenient. Their toaster oven reviews weren't much help, either—again, they mostly tested models I don't find in the stores.

Last Saturday we returned to the Van Fleet Trail and rode the second third, from the Bay Lake Trailhead to the Green Pond Road Trailhead, another round trip of about 20 miles.

As we were riding on the straight, flat, paved trail in the middle of nowhere, no motor vehicles to worry about and almost no other bicyclists, I laughed a little at our habit of wearing bike helmets.  When we began the practice, wearing a helmet was awkward and several times we forgot to put them on; now it's nearly as automatic as buckling our seatbelts in the car.  But a trail like this is safer than just pedaling down our very safe, isolated, residential street.

Along the way we met another couple of very fit and active bicyclists about our age.   The wife was building herself back up after a very bad accident on that very trail.  She was tooling along at about 18 miles per hour when suddenly a raccoon charged out of the grass and banged headlong into her front wheel.  What happened to the raccoon after he sped off across the trail they never learned, but she crashed full force into the pavement, splitting her helmet wide open.  She regained consciousness after about five minutes and the ambulance came about half an hour later.  (It shouldn't have taken so long, but they had trouble finding a 911 operator who had any idea where the Van Fleet Trail was.  Pretty odd, considering Google finds it immediately.)  She's doing fine now, but was in the hospital for three days.  From the state of her helmet, I imagine the outcome would have been quite different had her head hit the pavement unprotected.

Television has long been called the "idiot box," but here is more evidence that being a couch potato harms the brain as well as the body.  Unfortunately, in this case reading is just as bad as watching TV.

As usual, the study raises more questions.  How does this apply to humans?  Is the effect noticable in both young and old?  Is it physical activity, per se, that makes the difference, or are some types of exercise more valuable than others?

Most intriguing of all:  The study was about depression, but the hippocampus is also involved in learning and memory.  What effect, then, does exercise (or lack thereof) have on our general intellectual abilities?  Since the days when most people earned their daily bread through physical labor, have our sedentary lives taken away a significant portion of the intellectual growth gained by increased access to books and schooling?

When I mentioned this article to Porter, his first question was, if this is so, why the generalization of the "dumb jock"?  Perhaps the kind of exercise really does matter.  Maybe running, being a natural human motion, builds brain cells better than say, tennis.  Maybe the average intellectual ability among athletes is brought down significantly by those sports that involve massive blows to the head.

The sedentary lives of most American children are harming their brains as well as their bodies.  Blame television, video games, long hours in school/day care, urban apartment and suburban homes with small lots, or crime rates and parental fears that keep children close to home—any and all of the above.  Our kids need to get moving!  Until there is more data, I would favor the more natural forms of movement such as crawling and creeping for babies, and walking and running for older kids, and swimming for everyone (except that I worry about the high chlorine level in public pools), and only add organized sports on top of a good program of the above.  But that's a personal preference; I imagine that for most children any exercise will help.

Moreover, we adults need to get moving, too!  If we're worried about our children's intellectual development, they have equal right to worry out their parents' intellectual decline.  If exercise now will help keep our minds sharp as we age, we owe it to our kids as well as ourselves to get off the couch (or out of the computer chair).

So just what kind of people are we dealing with here?  According to this article, the eight suspects in Britain's recent failed terrorist attacks are doctors.  I can almost understand the desperate suicide bomber recruited from a population of uneducated, poor, and hopeless young men.  But doctors?  Those whose training and profession are supposed to be about relieving suffering and saving lives? 

Well, there were doctors who served Hitler.  The scariest attitude in the world is one that dehumanizes other people.  Be it Jews in Nazi Germany, natives in colonial days, slaves, unborn babies, or "infidels" of any stripe—once we convince ourselves that a group of people is less than human, we find it all too easy to justify the most hideous and inhumane actions.

I can rarely resist passing on good news like this.  Most reports of the benefits of chocolate, especially dark chocolate, come with all sorts of caveats that the harm done by the fat and sugar might negate the benefits of the polyphenols.  This German study, however, showed that a mere 6.3 gram daily dose of dark chocolate (another article said it was 50% cacao) had no negative effects yet resulted in a clinically significant drop in blood pressure among patients with blood pressures in the range of 130/85 to 160/100.

First a confession:  We have recently gone over to the Dark Side.  That is, we joined Netflix.

That last purpose was getting harder and harder to accomplish, since our local video stores have moved to concentrating on the latest movies, "kiddie shows," and video games.  It's next to impossible to find good mysteries, old movies, or anything educational.  Enter Netflix.  I'm all for supporting local businesses (or even mega-businesses with a local presence), but if they won't stock anything worth renting, I'll seek out a business that does.

Which brings me to the subject of this post.  At one point—it must be a few years ago now—we discovered the TV show, Numb3rs.  I was immediately entranced and could have become {gasp} hooked on a weekly TV show, except that its 10 p.m. slot meant not getting to sleep until after 11, and no show is worth that on a regular basis.

But then we joined Netflix.  Now we have seen the entire first season of Numb3rs, and a third of the second, spread out over about three months.  I probably should wait till I've caught up with today before writing, but I won't, because right now my review is positive, and I'm always afraid the show will degenerate as so many have done.  For the same reason, I've so far avoided websites that discuss the show.  I hope I'm wrong—but the few episodes we've seen of the current season don't make me too optimistic.  Nonetheless—

(First, a very quick synopsis for those who aren't familiar with the show.  Charlie and Don Eppes are brothers.  Don is an FBI agent; Charlie is a math genius, former child prodigy, now math professor at the fictional Cal Sci—clearly modeled after Cal Tech, whose consultants help out with the show's mathematics.  Each episode of Numb3rs features Charlie and some of his Cal Sci buddies using mathematics to help the FBI solve crimes.)

I love this show! For a number of reasons, the first of which is that, unlike almost every television show I've happened upon in the last oh-so-many years, it is relatively inoffensive.  Amazingly so.  I can't turn on network television for  10 minutes without being utterly repulsed, it seems.  Considering the show is about Los Angeles, criminals, and the FBI, one could call the language unrealistic.  This is a good thing.  If I wanted to hear that kind of language, I could return to vounteering at the local high school.  As it is, I wasn't bothered, though there are still some phrases I'd rather not hear my grandchildren repeating.  It's not a show suitable for them for other reasons, anyway.

Although their are occasional sexual crimes on the show, they are dealt with reasonably.  As far as the main characters go, sexual references are there, but few and far between.  One character is revealed as having lived with someone (outside of marriage) in the past, and another briefly mentions a sexual experience, but other than that we are spared those details (so far).  In the last episode (of the first season), the FBI catches a criminal in bed with his girlfriend, but even that wasn't too bad.  This may not sound restrained, but let me assure those of you who haven't peeped in on the recent TV/movie scene, this is a major step in the right direction for Hollywood!

If a show is about crime, there will be violence, but this, too, is understated.  (The pilot is the worst of what we've seen so far, and it's still better than most crime shows.)

That's what the show is not, and I go into all that detail first because there are those reading here who would really enjoy Numb3rs who don't like unpleasant surprises.

But what makes Numb3rs such a good show?  After all, if all you want to do is avoid bad language, sexual references, and violence, you don't have to watch any show at all.

Well, for one thing, it's not just about crime; it's about family.  Charlie, Don, and their dad live together in a pleasant home.  (Don and Charlie's mother died of cancer before the first episode, which provides some poignant moments. )  Actually, Don has his own apartment, but spends a lot of time back home.  They eat together, talk together, and play games together.  (Are you beginning to see a little resemblance here to my own family?)  The father is kindly, intelligent, and wise—characteristics not often associated with fathers by today's writers.  The brothers have their issues and occasional squabbles, but they clearly love, respect, and care for one another.

But most of all, I love Numb3rs because I can relate to it.  I watch the interactions amongst the various Cal Sci professors and students and want to shout, "I know these people!"  One of the reasons I find television shows and movies boring for the most part is that they are so totally unreal, and don't intersect my world in any way.  Numb3rs is different.

When Charlie tries to explain to Don that he can't just make his brain work on anything he wants to, that he must work on the problem that his brain is pursuing at the moment, I know exactly what he means.  I'm no math genius, and I know that discipline can be bridle and bit to the mind, but I also know how much more effective and efficient I am when I can give my brain its head, so to speak, and let it run with whatever is inspiring it at the moment of inspiration and for however long the course lasts.

When he groans at interruptions I know the frustration of having to start a whole line of thinking again because it has been broken, and of losing the tenuous idea altogether.  I don't identify with his doing math while listening to blaring rock music on his headphones—but he's younger than me.  :)

I love to hear the conversations between Charlie and his friend Larry, the physicist, because they sound like people I know, and sometimes even conversations I have had.  I even get some of the jokes.  They talk about things that matter in my world.

In other words, for all its obviously fictional qualities, I find Numb3rs believable—real people, real families, real work.  That's more than I can say about the rest of Hollywood's output, even (or especially) so-called realistic drama and "reality" shows.

Not that television shows matter, really.  There are better things to do with the time.  But the human nature is such that one cannot help delighting in the feeling that someone, somewhere, understands.  Even if only a little, and even if it is a made-up TV show.

Not that it's without some common Hollywood faults.  The female main characters are all drop-dead gorgeous as well as supremely competent, and the men aren't so bad, either.  Not much reality there.  Worse, the writers, producers, directors, and actors can't seem to shake basic Hollywood assumptions any more than a fish can shake his aquatic environment.  It's easy to catch the standard liberal digs thrown in, such as the U. S. government training terrorists in Colombia, and the stupidty of the Department of Homeland Security.  Worse, although as I said the sexual subplots are (or have been so far) mimimal, there is a basic assumption that any romantic relationship naturally leads to sex and moving in together, sans marriage, of course.  It seems Hollywood finds esoteric mathematicians easier to understand than those they refer to as "red state people."

You learn a lot from the extra features on the DVD about the attitudes of the actors and directors, not all of it good.  I was pleased to learn one thing about David Krumholtz, who portrays Charlie, however:  As a young student he had to take Algebra I three times, having failed twice.  But he became interested in the math his character was doing, and attended lectures and classes to try to understand it better.  At first they needed a "hand double"—someone else to write the equations on the board—but after a while he could do his own writing.

This review has sat around for over a month waiting to be better organized, so I'm calling blogger's privilege and just publishing it as it is.  Bottom line:  Numb3rs is a crime show, with themes that I would not want to have to explain to a young person.  But with that caveat, I highly recommend it.  Especially on DVD, with commercials removed.  it's amazing how much better a story flows when it's not constantly interrupted.

UPDATE April 3, 2008  We've just finished Season Two.  I still enjoy the shows, although the season ender was weird as well as offensive and if Season 3 is consistently like that we may not make it through them all.  The show is definitely formulaic, but I like the formula, so that's not the problem.  I actually prefered it when they stuck to the math and didn't delve so much into the characters' private lives.  Well, some of that was okay—I particularly like the warm-and-fuzzy family scenes—but Hollywood's basic assumptions regarding sexual behavior ruins the romantic-interest angle for me.  Numb3rs has definitly upped the ante on the sex-violence-bad language, though it is still better than most.  Sad that they can't leave one show that's adult without being offensive!

As I mentioned earlier, it's the basic Hollywood worldview that provides most of the offense.  The last show of the second season found nothing unreasonable about dream-visitation of the living by the dead, but the presence of a Bible in someone's home noteworthy and suspicious, and a character's statement that he and his girlfriend did not believe in having sex without marriage to be so peculiar as to make him into the chief suspect.

Larry the physicist is still my favorite character, though, and it's almost worth watching just for him.  On to Season Three! 

UPDATE May 27, 2008  Season Three is done, and I'm more than a little frustrated that Season 4 is not yet available.  The last episode of Season Three had some interesting twists but even more holes and logical inconsistencies that would be fun to discuss—if I could find the one other person in the world who has watched up to the end of Season Three but none of Season Four.  I won't talk about them here for fear of doing to someone else what Netflix did to me:  Whoever wrote the synopsis for the Season Four DVDs included a serious spoiler for the previous season.  Not cool.

All that aside, what I wrote in the April 3 update still holds.  The Hollywood worldview continues to intrude.  The sex-language-violence is to the point where I can tolerate it for the sake of the whole story, but can no longer recommend the series without serious caveats.  I'd say it's about to the level of the early James Bond movies.  But the basic premise of the show is still delightful, most of the stories are interesting, and there's a decent amount of character development that makes the whole team—not just Larry anymore—likeable.

A new study indicates that a combination of high fat, high sugar, and high stress is what piles on dangerous abdominal fat.  A high-stress life with a good diet is not a problem, as far as belly fat goes, and a a bad diet is not as much of a problem if stress levels are low.  At least if you're a mouse.

This should be good news, since both diet and our response to stress can be controlled.  However, the tone of the article bothers me, as it focuses on the medical and pharmaceutical possibilities the study raises.  Not that these are necessarily wrong, but it misses the big picture.

I've also noticed a fad among dentists lately:  selling mouth guards to protect the teeth of those whose stress response includes grinding their teeth at night.  Again, there's nothing wrong with that.  Sometimes you have to treat the symptoms.

I don't have enough data yet from my comics survey to make any permanent changes, but I've added a couple of new ones on a trial basis to my comics page.  Sherman's Lagoon was recommended by DSTB, and Stone Soup I just discovered.  I'm reserving judgement on both, but Stone Soup makes it because the currently-pregnant heroine is planning a home birth.  I can't read the archives far enough back to know the beginning, but I need to read the strip at least long enough to see how the idea is handled.

I've also moved Baby Blues to the bottom of the list, which will inconvenience some of you.  The order is not permanant, but for some reason I haven't figured out, going to the Baby Blues site now causes all subsequent comics to open annoyingly in a new tab or window instead of in the frame.

Here are a couple of Stone Soups I especially liked: