Lift Up Your Hearts!

For those of you who have been following our computer woes (here and here), this is where we are now.  In limbo.

The very good news  A friend lent us his device that turns an internal hard drive into an external, usb device, and we were able to copy the data to a new one-terabyte backup drive.  (Time out for a sigh of amazement.  One terabyte?  We used to do our backups on 5 1/4 inch floppies with a capacity of 110 kilobytes.)  Losing the hard drive would not have been a total disaster, as I have several layers of backup, but they are a bit spotty and it was really, really nice to have access to the files as I had left them the night before all this started.

The related bad news  What's the point of having backed up the whole C drive instead of just my own data, if one can't transfer all that information over to a new machine?  Apparently the way the Windows Registry works, all the programs will have to be reinstalled anyway—which of course means not only a lot of work but that I lose whatever came preinstalled with the original machine.  Oh for the days when they gave you the original disks—even for the operating system—when you bought a computer!  I guess that will save me backup space from now on, unless someone can tell me there's reason for backing up anything other than my personal files.

The lovely news  We've been studying The Five Love Languages in a class at church.  Porter has been exhibiting "Acts of Service" at a great rate with regard to this computer problem:  making phone calls, doing Internet searches, driving across down....

The very frustrating news  The Internet search for the appropriate motherboard was fruitless.  According to the people Porter talked to, that board is very popular right now; many people are trying to find it.  I wonder if it had an expiration date and everyone's is going bad?  Like sour milk or stale bread?  Getting anything other than the correct motherboard would require getting a new case for the machine and kludging things together, as the Gateway motherboard is not a standard configuration.

The absolutely ridiculous customer "support" news So Porter broke down and called Gateway to see how much an out-of-warranty repair would cost.  Guess what?  Not only will Gateway not sell the necessary parts, they won't do out-of-warranty repairs themselves!  I guess one is supposed to buy a new computer, but I don't see how that helps Gateway, since there's no way I'm buying another computer from them...unless all the major companies are in collusion.  But I'm not a conspiracy theorist—yet.

The temporarily hopeful news  The Gateway tech recommended a website for finding the correct motherboard.  It was one Porter had found, and indeed they had the right board, but it was "out of stock."  Buoyed by the Gateway recommendation, Porter called the company, which appeared to be helpful.  Yes, that board was out of stock and they didn't know when if ever they would get it again.  It was a very hot item, and they had another Gateway motherboard that was similar which several people had bought instead of the correct one.  We could buy that and try it out, returning it if it didn't work—they'd even waive the normal 15% restocking fee.  So Porter ordered one ($200) and we had a "party" at the home of the above-mentioned friend who lent us his hard drive enclosure.  Now this is a guy whose life is in large part computers, both his vocation and his avocation.  He had built every one of the uncountable computers in his house, except for the castoffs he as adopted, and I suspect he's done a lot to modify them, as well.  So it was encouraging to see him and Porter settle down to installing the new motherboard.

The discouraging news  At first it went well, thanks to our friend having some spare parts, such as ribbon cable, that had somehow been lost while the machine was at the repair shop :( , and despite the fact that the motherboard came with absolutely no documentation at all, and looked as if it is used, not new.  :(  :(  But it was a case of "almosts."  The board doesn't quite fit so some of the ports wouldn't work.  One capacitor is too tall, so the heat sink doesn't quite line up, so they ahd to monitor the CPU temperature while working.  If it ever works, we'll have to rout out the heat sink some.  But we didn't get that far.  After much twiddling, Windows boots!  Sort of.  But only in safe mode; otherwise it hangs.  After much effort and frustration, they gave up and we went to dinner.  So that's where it stands now:  in our living room, in pieces.

The dilemma  So what do we do now?

• Pour a lot of time and energy into trying to get Windows working, followed by making all sorts of kludges to get other things to fit/work, and (probably) reinstalling all my programs?
• Pay to send the motherboard back and hope we get some of our $200 returned?
• Buy an inexpensive new computer with space for good working parts (e.g. DVD drives, hard drive) from the old machine?  Easier said than done—the "basic" computers I've looked at tend not to have a lot of expansion space.
• Invest (again!) in a fancy desktop computer and hope this one lasts longer?
• Take advantage of the opportunity to get a new laptop and hope it lasts?
• Give it to Jon as a Christmas present?  After all, it has a (probably) working motherboard, a DVD read drive, a DVD write drive (both very nice), a 250MB hard drive, a high-speed, dual-core Athelon processor, a GB of memory, and a few other bells and whistles. (My suggestion)
• Don't give it to Jon, as a Christmas present for Heather.  (Janet's suggestion)
• Use it as a boat anchor.  (Porter's suggestion)

The interim solution I'm using our (old) laptop, having devised a scheme for keeping large quantities of data on the Maxtor 60G portable hard drive I take with me when travelling.  The immediate reason for this is that the laptop's hard drive capacity is only 20GB (actually less) which is woefully insufficient to hold my data alone—and Porter and I share this machine.  I think I like the idea, and plan to continue using it even when/if we get another machine, because then I won't have to worry about synchronizing data when we travel.  The interim solution is actually working fairly well, my primary frustrations being (1) I can't burn CD's or DVD's; (2) I can't read DVD's; (3) there are only two USB ports, and (4) the USB ports are old and slow—not only does data transfer take forever, but I'm heartily sick of having Windows tell me, every time I plug in a device, that it would peform faster if only I had a USB 2 port, when it knows quite well that I don't.

Stay tuned.  I believe it's time to write my friend Bill McCollum a letter.  It's a little early for Christmas cards, but I think he's due one in his capacity as Florida's Attorney General.  I need to vent about Gateway to someone besides my faithful, but small, blog audience. 

What would you think if you bought a top-of-the-line piece of equipment, and 19 months later—seven months out of warranty—it completely stopped working?  I wouldn't be happy even if it were a $25 item.

What if it cost over $1000—would you be a bit annoyed?  What if it was a piece of equipment necessary for much of the work you do?

But hey, sometimes things happen.  That's what repair shops are for.

But what if the manufacturer refuses to sell you the part you need to make the repair?

We've been loyal Gateway Computer fans for many long years; I think we've had five of them all told.  Cow boxes = excitement around here!

Nevermore.

In January of 2006 we bought our latest Gateway, a lovely high speed machine with lots of bells and whistles.  We did not opt for the extended warranty, since we've never had a bit of trouble with any of our Gateways—we only replaced them when they grew hopelessly out of date.   It was, indeed, a lovely machine, and did everything it promised.

Everything except last.

As I've written, last Monday it entered the machine-equivalent of a Persistent Vegetative State.  After trying several tricks, none of which did any good, we took it to a computer emergency room.  Diagnosis:  a failed motherboard.  If we would get a new Gateway motherboard, they would gladly replace it and get us up and running again.

Good news?  I thought so.  I mean, it was going to cost money, but that's life.  We spent $500 in car repairs over the last two weeks, too.  I was just glad that the diagnosis was not:  Your hard drive crashed and you've lost all your data.

I did think it was a little funny that the repair guy said we had to order the motherboard.  But now I know why.  Gateway doesn't sell them!  If your computer is under warranty, they'll fix it, but otherwise you're on your own.  The tech's recommendation?  "Google it."  Find a motherboard somewhere in cyberspace.  He even kindly provided the specs.

What kind of company won't sell replacement parts for a high-end, critical machine that's less than two years old???

Porter went down to Best Buy to ask them what they do when someone brings in such a machine under their extended warranty.  Um, guess what?  They Google it.  They dig around, looking for someone with the right Gateway motherboard to sell.

Je ne comprends pas!

What I do know is that I need to RETHINK.  How can I take advantage of what computers have to offer—they wouldn't be so important to me if they didn't have a lot of value to add—without being so dependent on them?  Do I go back to paper for critical information?

Should we get two of everything, to have a backup?  We sort of had that—our older Gateway still works, mostly.  But it's a Windows 98 machine with some funny quirks, and it lacks the power to do what I want to do.  So for backup purposes it's not really good enough.

Do I transfer as much as possible of my work to the Internet?  That's not possible with much of what I do, but if I used GMail I'd at least not lose e-mail messages when something like this happens.  That makes me a bit nervous, having all my e-mails stored elsewhere—but having them on my own machine didn't work out too well this time.

Any ideas?

Oh, and if I haven't answered an e-mail you sent me before last Monday, I'm probably not deliberatly ignoring it.  I just can't get to it....

Our friend Chris, the engineer who eschews e-mail and still uses a paper organizer, is fond of saying, "Just call me Ned."  I'm not ready to go that far, but his point of view is currently looking a little more reasonable.

After much internal debate, Porter decided to invest in an air card, a device that plugs into his computer and allows him to connect to the Internet from anywhere.  Well, make that anywhere with Cingular—oops, I mean the New AT&T—cellular service.  Unfortunately, that excludes some important locations, like Granby, Connecticut.  But it does include a great many places.  I tried it out on the way home from the airport a few days ago, and only lost service once on the 45-minute ride, and that for no more than a second.  The speed is not as fast as our normal broadband connection, but it's really not bad, especially if you use the accelerator option, which reduces the quality (and thus the downloading time) of images.

I foresee several uses of this new device in addition to the obvious business benefits that were the excuse for its purchase.  The one that is emblazoned in large letters at the present time, however, is that the major lightning strike of about an hour ago, which took out our cable connection, has not left us without Internet and phone service.  Ironically, I only two days ago I filled out a survey stating that Bright House's cable service has been very reliable and its customer service fine.  I still don't fault the cable service—a lightning strike is bound to wreak havoc.  But Bright House customer service can offer us help no sooner than next Tuesday!  That really is unaccepable.  If they were only offering cable TV service, that would be one thing, but when people are depending on you for Internet and phone service—especially phone service!—you need to be more attentive to repairs.

So I'm very grateful for our backup.  Thanks to the air card, we not only have Internet access, but were able to connect to CallVantage and have our phone calls forwarded to Porter's cell phone.

With this coming on top of my own computer being in the shop—status currently unknown—I'm once again feeling a little nervous about our dependence on technology.  There should always be a Plan B—and probably C, D, and E as well.

Throughout my school years, I hated the study of history.  Perhaps that's not quite accurate; I remember in elementary school enjoyable units on Indians and on Early Settlers, and a large and informative project on Ethiopia.  Progress after that was mostly negative, however.

A 10th grade World Cultures teacher was fairly inspiring, despite his other incarnation as a baseball coach.  Other than that I'd have to say that my history teachers could hardly have done more to make the study of history dull and tedious.  On top of that, I somehow picked up the idea that one was either a "math and science person" or a "history and English person," and it was not possible to be in both camps.  I staked my claim squarely in the math and science camp.

It was not till well after I graduated from college that I discovered that the story of our past is vital—in the sense of being full of life, as well as in the sense of critical importance.  I also learned the foolishness of limiting one's interests by someone else's categories.

I'm most definitely hindered by my lack of historical background. Dates and events are lost on me that are so ingrained in Porter he has difficulty imagining my ignorance.  To be fair, I believe it was more his own interest than his school experiences that gave him that knowlege, but in any case, he has a clear historical framework into which any new information neatly fits, which makes it easier to remember.  I have none of that.

But the foundation is growing, brick by brick and fact by fact, even though the required mortar seems to be many repetitions.  I can live with that—I'm learning, and that makes me content.

Perhaps the greatest help in my quest into our past has been my recently-acquired hobby of genealogy.  I, who had previously had no interest even in relatives beyond my immediate circle, now delight in dredging up information on even the remotest ancestor.  That I have discovered some to be famous, royal, and/or historically interesting thrills me.  To the best of my ability to determine, my joy is not that of snobbery; in fact, one of the reasons I eschewed any ancestor interest in the past was my annoyance at such organizations as the DAR and other people's bragging about their ancestry.  I truly would rather have found Native American ancestors than Mayflower immigrants.

But now I talk about them all, myself.  What excites me is having a connection to historical times, be it through my late-19th century Western Pennsylvanians, or distant kings of England.

Which brings me, at last, to the inspiration for this post.

Don't ask me why I'm reading a 1000-page book on the history of the Crusades.  I'm not sure myself, except that the Christianity Today review of Christopher' Tyermans' God's War was intriguing, and the book was available at our local library.  I'm currently on page 19 of the Introduction, and so far, it's fascinating.  Especially when I'm struck by passages such as the following.  Don't worry about understanding it, since it's completely out of context:

As a result of dynastic inheritance and a military and political victory in a long English civil war, in 1154 the situation was further complicated when Henry, count of Anjou, also duke of Normandy by inheritance from his mother and duke by marriage of Aquitane, became king of England.  Henry II, the first of the Angevin (i.e. Anjou was his patrimony) kings of England, was overlord to far more of France than his supposed French sovereign Louis VII:  Normandy, Maine, Anjou, Touraine, Brittany, Poitou, the douchy of Aquitaine, the Limousin, Gascony and parts of the Auvergne, with unachieved claims to parts of Languedoc.

Sounds pretty dry, right?  Not if Henry II is your distant grandfather, Eleanor of Aquitaine your distant grandmother, and Maine a part of France you visited last spring, where you stood on the mount of one of Henry II's fortifications. Which just happens to be on part of the home of some friends of yours.

Connections!  That's what it's all about.  The more you learn, the more you know; the more you know, the easier it is to learn, and the more you want to learn.  The very best part of education is to inspire that victorious cycle.

Central Florida is the most dangerous place in the country, at least if it's lightning strikes that worry you.  The tragedy of a girl who was struck by lightning just after descending from her school bus is still fresh in our memories, so it's no wonder the Orange County school board policy errs on the side of caution:  No student is allowed outside until 30 minutes after the last lighning flash, if thunder follows the lightning within 30 seconds.

They are wisely reconsidering the policy, however, after a recent debacle.  A long-lasting storm coupled with rigid enforcement of the rules kept some 2000 students trapped at two schools until nearly 9 p.m.  Snacks were trucked in (the district apparently caring less about the safety of their employees), and no doubt many of the students thought the excitement high adventure—at least for the first hour.  But most of the children—not to mention the teachers—must have been anxious to get home to their families, with not a few kindergarteners crying for their mommies.

Certainly their mommies were longing to get to them.  If the students were imprisoned in relative comfort and safety, their parents did not fare as well, trapped as they were in a long line of cars, with no idea when their children might be released.  The students may have had food, but picture the poor mom, waiting in a hot car with a couple of preschoolers and no more than a couple of rice cakes and a bottle of water among them.  If that.  The schools would not even allow parents to sign their children out and walk outside with them under their own responsibility.  This policy, above all, needs to be rethought.

There are scenarios in which it may be necessary to keep parents away from campus and their children for a time.  We had a situation not long ago where a student was threatening others with a gun; under such circumstances, adding a swarm of panicked parents to the mix would only increase the danger. But such very exceptional cases should not be the model for less critical situations.

While students are on campus, schools have an awesome and serious responsibility for their safety, but this is a delegated responsibility.  The true authorities in a child's life are his parents, and if they temporarily transfer some of their responsibility to someone else, be it babysitter or institution, they must retain the right to take it back at will.  A school that does not recognize the primacy of parental authority needs to rethink its raison d'être, or risk tempting parents to rethink their educational choices.

Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that." (James 4:13-15)

But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain;
The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!
(Robert Burns, To A Mouse, On Turning Her Up In Her Nest With The Plough)

I had plans for this week.

They did not include dealing with a computer that refuses to awaken from sleep. My alarm clock went of at 5:15 this morning, and I was up and about within seconds. Not so my computer.

Last night there was no hint of problem, not the slightest suggestion that something was not entirely well. I put the machine into sleep mode, as I often do if time is short in the morning. When I awoke and stumbled into my office, I pressed a key, as usual, to bring up the computer, then left the room for a few minutes. When I returned, the first thing I noticed was that the whirring noise of the fan was still loud, as it is when the machine is just waking, or booting. The second thing was that there was no display. I played with turning the display on and off, receiving only a brief "no signal" message before it went blank again, then turned the compujter off. To do that I had to hold the power button in several seconds, which is never a good sign. Turning the machine on again resulted in the same scenario. The hard drive light comes on for a while, but there are no associated, familiar sounds of disk access, and soon all I'm left with is a power light that blinks on and off, as it does while asleep. Only it won't wake up. There was a time when I could tell what my machine was saying to me by looking at its lights, but back then I had dozens to work with, not just one. This one seems to be saying no more than "On Strike."

So I turned to my Gateway manual. Maintaining and Troubleshooting Your PC. That sounds promising. Problem: The computer will not start up. Probably cause: The computer isnot connected to an AC outlet. Wow. That was helpful.

It didn't get any better after that. I found the System Restoration CD's, which might be useful at some point, but the manual cheerfully refers me to the on-screen information for instructions.

I suppose the next step is a reorganization of my office—which is sadly needed, though it wasn't highest on my priority list for the week—in hopes of finding the Boot Disk I'm pretty sure I made when I installed Norton SystemWorks. The only reason I say "pretty sure" instead of being certain is that I've installed Norton so many times on so many machines, they all run together in my mind, and at the moment all I can find are 3.5 inch floppy disk boot CD's, which I know is wrong because this machine doesn't have a floppy drive. So now I have to figure out where the "safe place" is that I decided to store it.

Then maybe I'll take the cover off the computer and see if anything looks as if it has worked loose. That would be a nice, easy fix.

Somewhere along the line I'll probably give my favorite Lime Daley Support Tech a call, not so much because I expect him to be able to do anything long distance, but in hopes he'll have some good ideas.

I believe my important files are reasonably well backed up, though I know I'm behind on mail backups. Ironically, I held the external backup drive in my hand last night, but decided it was too late to start a backup at that point. Never put off till tomorrow.... One thing I know: If and when I get out of this mess, I should go out and buy another backup drive, because one of the reasons I've been doing partial rather than compete backups is that one 500G drive is not adequate for backing up four machines.

But this post is ample evidence that I'd rather whine about problems then work on them, so I think the first thing I'll do is bury my head in the sand for a while. Eat breakfast. Work on problems of a different nature, such as the need to take the car to the mechanic because the rear A/C no longer works....

Man proposes; God disposes.

Readily acknowledging that God's plans for me this week are by definition better than mine, I nonetheless hope they include a rapid and complete recovery from this mess. As catastrophes go, even severe computer problems are not very high on the list, even for someone who depends on a computer as much as I do. It's always good to pause to be thankful for all that is going right. And I'm grateful for the laptop. Event though the bulk of my work is on the main machine, I'd be panicking a lot more if I didn't have this to keep me in touch with the world and some of my most critical data.

Hmmm, perhaps this is a warning to step up my hurricane preparations....

Not really.  I do want my vote to count.  But I can't help finding the Democratic Party's attempt to disenfranchise Floridians amusing.  I do believe they're still sore over Bush's 2000 victory, even though Al Gore has every reason to be thankful he lost that election.

Florida has defied Democratic National Committee rules by moving its primary date into January, a month reserved by party rules for Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. Now the DNC threatens to deprive Florida's delegates of their votes at the national convention if we don't change our primary date to suit them.  There is a certain validity to their claim that they're only enforcing the rules, but what they are doing is missing the perfect opportunity to revise a totally antiquated system.  Who can blame Florida, and other states, from wanting a say in the choosing of presidential candidates?  That decision has already been made by the time of the primaries in many states.  It's time to settle on one, national primary date.  The candidates can still get in plenty of campaigning time, travel time from state to state being nearly negligible.

On the other hand, the DNC has also threatened to penalize candidates who would dare campaign in Florida or other wayward states.  This sounds like such a good thing to me I'm tempted to support the Committee's decision.

It's not my story, and it's not my photograph, but it's my grandson!  (Click on the picture for a larger view.)

A true father-son moment.  Could their faces be any more radiant?

Mommy, It's a Renoir! was the title of a book about art appreciation for children that I fell in love with many years ago.  To my chagrin, by the time I decided we could afford to buy the set, it was no longer available.

Thus I was thrilled to discover that the program is back in print.  Once a homeschooler, always a homeschooler, especially when one has nephews and grandchildren to consider.  For reasons I can't imagine, the exciting title has been changed to How to Use Child-Size Masterpieces.  Could they have tried to make it sound more boring?

It is the same book, however, and the "Child-Size Masterpieces" booklets that provide materials for the program are also available, from Parent Child Press.  Perhaps I find it easier to spend money for grandchildren than children; perhaps I fear they will go out of print again; perhaps I'm looking forward to learning more about art myself as I try it out.  Mostly likely all three.  In any case, I ordered the whole set!

I also ordered the DVD that explains how to use the program.  (The website says it's a videotape, but it's actually a DVD and less expensive than the tape.)  The information on the DVD is covered better in the book, so I can't recommend spending the additional $20; on the other hand, it is helpful to see the program in use, so I can recommend watching the DVD once, if you <ahem> happen to know someone who already owns it.

Another thing not to spend money on turns out to be the folders.  The program is very Montessori-like, with a specific, color-coded folder setup designed, as are most Montessori materials, to give the child as much independence as possible in his work.  I'm not saying this is a bad idea; I think it's great.  But it's probably worth making them yourself—the book includes instructions.  I chose to purchase the materials "with vinyl storage folders" for an additional cost, expecting that the work would be done for me:  cutting the folders down to size, pasting the "representative" picture on the outside, adding the color-coding dots for the pockets, gluing folders together to make the four- and six-pocket folders needed for some of the steps in the program, cutting apart the pictures and sorting them appropriately amongst the folders.  Wrong.  The folders are of the right color and dimensions, but the rest of the work remains.  We'll see what I think about my decision when I've done the work.

Those are the negatives.  For the rest, I'm excited!  Janet and I are going to enjoy working through the program ourselves before passing it on.  I hope to gain, not only a better appreciation for art, but sufficient knowledge of the program to be able to expand it ad infinitum using other art postcards.

Remembering that where they are now, we could be any time in the next few months, let's remember in prayer the people facing Hurricane Dean.  Not that there aren't always plenty of people in other situations needing our prayers, but for obvious reasons I have a special concern for those in a hurricane's path.

I really have little right to complain about Windows Media Player as I'm only in the beginning stages of trying to understand it.  Jon and Heather gave me a great gift recently:  a 40G mp3 player which I plan to integrate into our stereo system as an N-disk CD changer, where N is a very large number.  How lazy can you get?  But I know I will take much better advantage of our large CD collection when I don't have to go to all the bother of actually replacing the CD in the player.  This gift was a delightful surprise, not only because it's something I've been thinking about for a long time but hadn't done anything about, but especially because I didn't have to do the shopping.  :)

To my even greater delight, Jon altered the firmware so that I can see the device on my computer directly through Windows Explorer (which, to show my age, I occasionally call "File Manager") instead of through the mediation of Windows Media Player.  But I like WMP for playing CD's, so I decided to try to figure out how to use its Library feature.

I haven't tried hard enough to give up yet.  But I'm allowing myself to indulge in a grumble:  Why does it have to be so non-intuitive?  I know I've been spoiled.  One used to need to read the manual thoroughly before being able to use software; now the interface is usually so accommodating it takes special effort even to find a manual.  I've been able to use Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other Microsoft applications pretty much out of the box, so I was expecting more of Media Player.

What I can't get my head around is how it is organized, and how it works.  It scans my computer for audio files automatically, thereby picking up all sorts of files I don't want in the Library, but won't allow me to add a specific file manually.  If I drag a file from Explorer into WMP, I can't add it directly to the library—it just plays.  Somehow the act of playing automatically adds things to the Library, but what a strange way to accomplish a simple task.  When I change data from within WMP it seems to change the file sometimes, but not others.  I changed the name of an album in WMP, but that change did not affect the name I saw in Explorer, and vice versa.  I tried deleting the album from the Library, then adding it again, hoping it would pick up the right name, but that only worked if I checked the option, "Add files previously deleted from Library"—and that picked up the old file name, not the new.  And there are other identifiers, such as "genre," which are somehow associated with the file itself—if I copy it manually to the mp3 player, not using the WMP Sync function, the data is there—but I haven't yet figured a way to access (and change) it from Explorer.  I think I'd rather use WMP—it has some nice editing features—but don't want to spend a lot of time making changes only to see them undone when I rearrange my files, which is what happened once already.

Oh well, I'm not asking for answers here; I'm going to stumble along in my usual way—though I've already found out that the Help file answers questions I don't have more than questions I do, such as "How can you make something that should be as simple as changing a file and make it so complicated?"  No doubt once I'm familiar with the system I'll laugh at my baby steps, but right now it's rather like the first stages of learning Japanese, when I could hardly distinguish one sound from another.  I need a "Press 1 for English" button.

With my interest in both children and education you knew it wouldn't be long before I commented on the latest "Baby Einstein" controversy.  A study (based on telephone surveys) published in The Journal of Pediatrics found that babies between eight and sixteen months experienced a significant decrease in language development for every hour spent per day viewing baby videos.

Now those who ridicule parents' attempts to enrich their children's early educational enviroments are having an I-told-you-so field day, and those who profit from the business are crying foul.  The responses that bother me most, however, are those of the defenders of baby videos.  They are giving answers to the wrong questions, and reassurances for the wrong concerns.

Commentators rushing to the defense of parents readily cede the ground of infant stimulation and assure us that it doesn't really matter what the videos do or don't do to our children; all parents need a break now and then and letting a video entertain your baby is a perfectly good way to achieve that goal, just another form of baby swing, bouncer or other device designed to give parents a little distance from the demands of parenthood.

I don't deny the need of parents for some respite, though I may disagree on what constitutes a good approach to the problem. But that's hardly the main issue here; I don't think it would even make the top ten of my questions, which include:

• When is an infant's visual system sufficiently developed to make sense of the image on a television screen, which is not the same as seeing a physical object?


• What effect does this unnatural visual experience have on the baby's developing eyes and brain? 


• What type of video experience did the babies have?  Are all baby videos equally bad?


• What is the effect of small amounts of video exposure, say less than 15 minutes per day in the context of a great deal of other experiences and personal interaction—a more likely situation in a household where parents are not looking for an electronic babysitter but are actively trying to enrich their baby's learning experience?  The study rated the effect in terms of hours of video exposure per day—I can't even imagine how a parent could set his child in front of a television screen for that much time and think it to be a good thing.


• What is the best use of a baby's time when it comes to mental development?  Is watching a video better than sitting in a dark room but worse than crawling for a toy?  Is being carried in a sling, close to Mom, still better?  Would the opportunity to see a very short video (content is still another question) plus plenty of time for crawling plus lots of time being carried around best of all?

I've never had a Baby Einstein video, never bought one for nephews or grandchildren, and as far as I know never seen one.  I certainly have no vested interest in them.  But if we're going to discuss such important issues as babies' mental development, let's consider the critical questions and not be sidetracked by defending business interests and assuaging parental guilt feelings.

I acknowledge that sometimes the government is better than the market at accomplishing good things.  In the classic example, Company A might want to reduce its emission of pollutants, but knows that if it does it will no longer be competitive with Company B.  Company B might be in the same position.  But if the government requires all companies to make the reduction, none is left at a competitive disadvantage.

Nonetheless, I believe the market can often do a better job, being more flexible.  Take low-flow shower heads, for example.  I'm all for saving water, but I'd rather choose the method.  I'm a quick shower person: get in, do the job, get out.  Low-flow shower heads frustrate me, because I have to go more slowly—and I suspect thus use at least as much water as before.  I would much rather be able to purchase a high-flow shower head for my house, and save water in other ways.  What we don't spend watering our lawn would probably supply a small city.

What inspired these thoughts was not only my frustration at trying to wash my hair while we were on vacation, but an article by David P. Gushee in the July 2007 issue of Christianity Today:  Old-Fashioned Creation Care.  It's a good article about Gushee's rediscovery of his grandparents' values—hard work, modesty in consumption, consistent giving, frugality in spending, saving for the future, and squeezing every last drop of value out of your possessions—in the context of his concern for proper care of God's creation.

Yet when I look at what his family is doing to live more simply and use less energy, I am yet more convinced that these must be personal, individual commitments, not something mandated from on high.  Take these two, for example:

• We are making a gradual transition to compact fluorescent light bulbs, which cost more on the front end but use less energy and last longer.


• We have set the summer thermostat to 75 and the winter thermostat to 65.

I hear talk of making the use of those fluorescent bulbs mandatory, and I groan.  Maybe the technology will improve, but I saw them in use on our trip to Europe, and throughly disliked them.  We even had one here for a while, and I was very glad when it finally died so we could go back to an incandescent light.  It may save energy, but I found myself much more likely to leave it on instead of turning it off when I left the room, because I couldn't stand the delay between flipping the switch and seeing light.  As I said, I'm a get in, get the job done, and get out type of person, and waiting at the door to the garage for the light to decide to turn on was maddening.  Worse, it was harder for my old eyes to see in the dim flourescent light, and the colors were all wrong.  If they can come up with an energy-efficient lightbulb that more accurately mimics natural sunlight, and turns on when I flip the switch, I'll be happy to switch, but until then I'll fight the idea.

Because there are other ways to save energy!  Reading about Gushee's thermostat settings made me realize why I was actually cold at two of the places we stayed on our recent trip, despite sweltering outside temperatures (104 degrees in North Carolina!).  If 75 degrees is an environmentally-responsible A/C setting, then we are going 'way above and beyond.  When we first moved to Florida we had the thermostat set at 88 degrees.   After all, that's when we had been able to endure in New York, where we didn't even have a pool in which to refresh ourselves.  That didn't last long—in New York it cools down at night and the clothes don't mildew in the closet.  But even though we've been getting wimpier and have gradually lowered the thermostat over the years, if we ever let it dip below 80 degrees it's a temporary indulgence, usually brought on by the fact that all the computer equipment in my office makes it a lot hotter than 80 degrees in the place I spend much of my time.

So I figure what we save in A/C use makes up for our light bulb preference.  Others might make the opposite choice.  As much as possible, we should have such options, and the market generally does a good job of providing both choices and incentive.  Yes, we keep our house temperature (summer and winter) at something other than completely comfortable as part of being environmentally responsible, but I can't deny that saving money is also a motivating factor.   If there really is a compelling government interest in encouraging us to ditch our incandescent bulbs and our high-flow shower heads, I'd far rather see the price rise than have them unavailable.

Let people choose their own shades of green; a colorful palette will encourage voluntary compliance, and will probably be healthier and more helpful in the long run.

I have a friend who is a faithful e-mail forwarder.  I don't mind, because she is pretty much the only one who sends me the dusty sweepings of cyber space, and occasionally she finds some gems.  One of her recent offerings was not treasure, however, but fool's gold.

Note that the words of the e-mail, the majority of which I reproduce below, do not belong to my friend.  She gets credit for providing blog-post inspiration, not for the embarassing sentiments.

Today I picked up at Bank of America several of the new $1.00 coins with the picture of George Washington on it. To my shock and dismay the words, "In God We Trust", are not on this coin!

A quick search of the other coin denominations in my collection confirmed that every one contained these faithful words. The new George Washington $1.00 coin is the first money ever issued by the USA in modern history without the words "In God We Trust". By omitting these words, our politically correct, secularist leaders made a conscientious decision that either; 1) God does not exist, or 2) that God exists, but can no longer be trusted.

Who originally put 'In God We Trust' onto our currency?

My bet is that it was one of the Presidents on these coins.

All our U.S. Government has done is Dishonor them, and disgust me!!!

I am personally offended and fed up with the denigration of God and Christianity in my country. I am certain George Washington would never have agreed to his picture on the coin if it any way diminished faith in God.

What can we do to show our displeasure? First of all, let's boycott the coin. Do not ask for it at banks. If it is given to you in change ask for dollar bills instead and tell the person why. Write your Senators stating your displeasure.

Finally, if you agree, pass this e-mail on to others. Collectively, we must send a strong message to those secularists who are trying to remove God from our culture. If we do this, some 300 million $1.00 coins will back up and rot in the supply chain! To God be the glory!

Together we can force them out of circulation. Please send to all on you mail list !!!

You had better believe I don't want one !!!!!!!

Sigh.  I could give free rein to my Inner Conspiracy-Theorist and say it's all Ted Kennedy's fault.  Having experienced the higher-level coinage of Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Switzerland, and the European Union, I wish the United States had the sense to supplant (not just supplement) the dollar bill with dollar coins.  (And maybe the $2 and $5 bills while we're at it.)  But the mountain of paper used to print dollar bills comes from Massachusetts, where the Crane Paper Company has a stranglehold monopoly on the business.  The $1 bill has a lifespan of under two years and represents about 45% of the U. S. currency production, so it's no surprise that Massachusetts politicians don't like dollar coins.

However, as I've always maintained, there's no point in invoking conspiracy theories when plain human ignorance can provide sufficient explanation.  What makes this e-mail so embarassing is not just the hype but the ignorance:  "In God We Trust" IS on the new dollar coins.

I'll send a dollar coin to the first nephew who e-mails to tell me where the motto can be found.  If you do find one of the new coins WITHOUT the motto, please send it to me.  It's worth a lot more than $1.... 

Facts about $1 notes

The history of "In God We Trust" on U. S. money

As one who habitually indulges in catastrophism, I appreciated this essay by John Stackhouse on why people don't get back to us right away when we communicate.  I'm not usually upset when people don't answer e-mails immediately, because if everyone answered e-mails immediately, we'd get sucked into in a destructive vortex.  However, I confess to what might be an inordinate desire for blog comments; my hope for many of my posts is that they will be discussion-starters, and with any of them it's nice to know that someone is at least reading my offerings.  What's more, there are certain blogs I check frequently, looking for information, commentary, and discussion, and it's hard not to be disappointed when nothing new is forthcoming. (I'm not just referring to my own family's blogs, though of course they are the most important and most eagerly sought-after.)

My resigned sigh of "Everyone is too busy actually living life to write about it" is much more accurate than my joking, "Nobody loves me."    Perhaps the most useful response, however, is to remember the times I'm slow at responding to e-mails, or fail to make a comment on a post I like, or to acknowledge a comment on my own blog—as well as the days I allow to pass without providing a new post for my own readers.  In my own case I know there are good reasons for my lack of communication.  Okay, so some of the reasons aren't really all that good—but none is malicious.

Assuming the best rather than the worst sounds like a far happier and healthier approach to all of life.