The Yin Blog

Last one standing?

I'm the last one standing in the house. . . .

Last Friday, my older son woke up with a fever and threw up four times that morning by the time he saw the doctor.  He had pneumonia in one lung, a severe asthma attack, and what we later learned was type A influenza (which means it's almost certainly H1N1 "swine" flu).  He spent three nights in the hospital with an IV drip and an oxygen feed.  My wife stayed with him the whole time, while I stayed at home with our younger son -- though we did go visit twice daily.

By Monday, when he was released from the hospital, he was doing much better, though not cleared to return to school.  Of course, my wife had a fever and headache and other flu symptoms by then(!).  I did my best to keep our younger son away, but by Wednesday night, he too developed a fever, and last night he ended up in the emergency room with croup, probably brought on by the flu.

I feel kind of silly wearing a hospital mask when I'm around them, sleeping in a different room, and so on.  I haven't really felt any different, so I'm hoping it's not inevitable that I'll get sick too. . . .

Is Senator Obama a "Bob the Builder" fan?

Just wondering, since his catch-phrase in his speech tonight was "Yes, we can!"

Those of you who are parents of young kids are probably well familiar with the show "Bob the Builder," whose theme song includes the refrain, "Bob the Builder, can we build it?  Bob the Builder, yes, we can!"

Allegorical speech

There was an episode from the 5th season of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" (bonus geek points to any reader who identifies the name of the episode) where Captain Picard ends up stranded on a planet with an alien who communicates by saying apparently non-sensical things like "Darmok at Gerard."  Eventually, Picard figures out that this alien species communicates by referring to past stories.  To say that they need to cooperate, for example, the alien would refer to a past incident where two rivals put aside their differences to defeat a common enemy.

Of course, this doesn't work so well if you don't know the alien's mythology.

Anyway, I always thought this was kind of a silly episode; after all, who talks like that?  It's way too complicated.  But recently, when my baby son has had enough to eat, he's been saying, "Pooh stuck in Rabbit's doorway."  This is, of course, in reference to the scene in "Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree" where Winnie-the-Pooh (a bear of very little brain) gorges on Rabbit's honey and then finds that he can't fit through the doorway -- only after he's already halfway through.

Then I started to realize that allegorical speech would make things a lot more efficient.  Some obvious candidates: prisoner's dilemma and Tragedy of the Commons.

Then I remembered a passage from Dean Harold Koh's book, The National Security Constitution, in which he describes how government lawyers referred to United States  v. Curtiss-Wright Corp. as the "Curtiss-Wright so I'm right cite," because of its apparent holding (but actually just dicta) that the President enjoys vast unfettered discretion in the realm of foreign affairs.

I wonder if it's possible to teach class like this . . . .

Hooray for the Kenyons

Hooray for the Kenyon family!  Long-time readers may recall the heartbreaking story of Will Kenyon, who was born three months premature.  Will struggled to survive but ultimately passed away.

But the Kenyons just had another baby, Edward, who was a month early but seems to be fit and healthy.  Congratulations to the family!

Baby Riverdance

My baby son really likes music, and now he starts doing a jitterbug-type dance that's like some kind of Baby Riverdance.  Maybe this is my ticket to retiring. . . .

How parenting is like taking a deposition

How is being a parent to a baby/toddler who can't quite speak like taking a deposition?  You can't ask compound questions, like "do you want cereal or yogurt?".

Recap of a good football Saturday

It was a reasonably good Saturday for the sports teams of this blog.  # 22 Iowa beat Northern Iowa 45-21, #15 Cal beat Illinois 35-20 (despite long-time reader g's prediction that "Illinois will take care of business for the Big Ten by crushing Cal"), and in the sweetest game of the trio, unranked UCLA trashed #21 Oklahoma 41-24.

Things could have gone better.  Considering that Northern Iowa isn't even a Division I-A team, it's kind of lame that Iowa gave up three touchdowns.  I mean, this is a team that hasn't beaten Iowa since the 1880s.  As for Cal, it was actually behind 17-7 well into the third quarter.

But the UCLA win was convincing, and as an added bonus, kills the national championship hopes of Oklahoma, which, after all, is one of the teams that I automatically root against due to the fact that it has routinely bullied its opponents.

Even better, Notre Dame (another bully school) lost 44-41 in overtime.

Oh, and maybe the best thing of all today is that when I played the Cal (and UCLA) fight song, my baby son started dancing.  My early indoctrination of him has worked!

Back on land

I just got back from a week-long cruise in the Eastern Carribean, and I still feel like the ground is swaying beneath me.  I had a good time, except for the 5th day, when I woke up with a 101 degree fever and spent 22 of the next 24 hours sleeping or wanting to sleep.  Fortunately, I got better the next day.  (It was not Norwalk virus.)

Some notable events/observations/random thoughts:

Baby accomplishments:

* The biggest deal for me by far was that my baby son learned to walk unassisted!  Kind of strange that this would happen on a ship with its gently rolling rhythm, but then again, maybe it's all the same to him.

* He also learned to drink from a cup, to eat a bread roll without having it broken into small pieces, and to say "uh oh."

* Another uncanny thing: our head waiter (from Turkey) spent all week trying to get my son to give him a high-five, and only on the last dinner did my son oblige.  How did the little guy know?

Employment matters:

* It seemed like just about every crew member I met was either from Southeast Asia (primarily Thailand, the Phillipines, Indonesia, or India) or Eastern Europe (including lots of former Soviet republics).  I'm not sure why I didn't see any crew members from South America or Africa.  It's possible that it was just a small sample size, of course, but it seems more likely that Carnival targets its recruiting in specific areas.

* The only exceptions to the Southeast Asia/Eastern European predominance were the cruise director and his staff.  The director was from England, and the staff members I saw were from Canada, the U.S., and Australia (I think, going by the accent).  I think the Captain was Scandanavian, but I didn't actually see him.

* I found myself wondering what it was like for the crew members to work 8-12 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 7-8 months straight.  Our assistant cabin steward (from Romania) pointed out that when you live and work on a cruise ship, having a "weekend" off doesn't really mean all that much.  At least he was just 25 and single.  Our main cabin steward (from India) has a 3 year old son back home.  When I heard that, I was floored.  I mean, I was totally impressed with the self-sacrifice that he was willing to go through to make money for his family, but my gosh, that's such a long time away from your child.

* Our head waiter, though, did it right.  His wife also works on the ship.  (I guess "weekends off" would mean something, especially if you get to go off the ship to one of the ports of call.)

* On the other hand, when the crew member goes home, he can get two months off without having to work.  I suppose you could look at it like this: during those two months, he gets to spend all his time with his family.  Compare that to the typical U.S. worker, who spends a few hours a day five days a week with family members and only gets the weekends off.

* Although the cruise director made what I thought were somewhat insensitive jokes at the expense of the crew members' English, I actually thought the crew -- with the exception of the Captain -- were quite easy to understand.  That's not surprising, since I imagine that one of the prime attributes you'd look for in employees for a cruise ship catering to Americans would be English-speaking ability.

Customs:

* One thing I was surprised about was the lack of any scanning equipment at the Customs re-entry at the port.  We simply handed our customs declaration forms and showed our passports, and we were through, with our carryable luggage.  True, it'd be pretty impossible to sneak in nuclear material through carryon luggage, but still, what about drugs and other such stuff?  The cruise director's explanation was that the customs officials are trained to look for "ugly and suspicious looking" people, and if you look to the person to your left and the one to your right, and they aren't ugly and suspicious looking, you're the one who's going to get searched.

* So I guess we aren't ugly and suspicious looking.

* Of course, the heavy stuff was sent via the ship's crew and the port's porters, and those were scanned and sniffed.  But not everyone did that.  Some people opted for "self-assist," meaning they walked off the ship carrying everything of theirs and had no need to wait for their luggage to clear.  I wonder how many of them were ugly and suspicious looking. . . .

Meanwhile:

* I'm gone for a week, and "The Law Firm" is canceled?  (Via Prof. Goldman)  Well, I haven't gotten around to watching the second episode yet.  Maybe I'll just keep it on TiVo and wait for Bravo to announce its schedule for burning off the remaining episodes.

* Now Prof. Bainbridge doesn't even have to send his articles out to the law reviews?  He just posts them on his blog and offers come rolling in?

I'm not going to complain about sleep deprivation anymore

Not after reading about what dolphin and killer whale parents go through:

Sleep-deprived mothers of newborn babies should spare a thought for bottlenose dolphins and killer whales.

A study has shown the young of those two species do not sleep at all during the first month of life. They are active 24 hours a day -- and their mothers have learned to cope.

That's just scary.  Though I note that the study concludes that the "mothers" have learned to adapt.  Does that mean that dolphin and killer whale dads don't share equally in the raising of the little ones?

It's all relative

I used to be a night owl.  Getting up early for me was something like 8 a.m.  That, however, was in the pre-Nicholas days.  The Little Emperor has inexorably changed me.  Today, I got up at 7:20 a.m. to tend to him, and that seemed like a nice bit of sleeping in.

Which it was, considering that last week, he got up at 5:45 a.m. every morning.

Except for the horrid day when he got up at 4:30 a.m. . . .