Play more video games with your kids

Here's a great interview with Dr. Cheryl Olson on the effects of video games on young kids.

Drs. Cheryl Olson and Lawrence Kutner are cofounders of the Harvard Medical School Center for Mental Health and Media. They've written a book called Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do, based on a study of gaming in individual families. Despite what the title of the book sounds like, it's not the usual stuff about how game addiction is making kids into little sociopaths and we should protect them from it.

My takeaway from the interview is this section:

First, play games with your kids. Find things that you both can enjoy. Young teens who took our survey (and boys in focus group studies) said that they rarely played with a parent, and most would like to. I think more families are playing together now that systems such as the Wii make games more accessible to casual players. If your child is a bit older, ask him to teach you how to play a level of his favorite game. It’s a healthy thing for parent/child relationships for the child to teach the parent something for a change. It’s also a chance for parents to learn more about their child’s interests and strengths.

When you buy games, look for ones that encourage kids to plan and problem-solve (that could be Zoo Tycoon or a Legend of Zelda game). Choose some that allow for collaborative play, with you and/or with friends.

Notice how games affect your child emotionally. A lot of young teens we studied used violent games to cope with angry feelings. That’s probably healthy in moderation, but might be a problem in excess. Some teens use zombie-type games to master fears, playing over and over until they beat the game completely. If a game seems to upset your child, put it away until he’s older. Keep your games with grown-up themes or scary content someplace inaccessible, and only play them when the kids are in bed.

Don’t worry too much about how much time your child spends with games if she has at least one good friend, does well in school, takes out the trash the 3rd time you ask, etc, but be alert to signs of problems. If your child often misses sleep to play games, loses interest in other activities, or is doing poorly in school, the game play may be a problem or, it may be a symptom of another problem, such as depression, that the child is trying to cope with.

As far as I'm concerned, that's all great advice.

(Note: the preceding link is nearly a year old. Since that time, Ben's druid has reached level 45, he's specced as a spellcaster, and his damage is stacking up well against that of many random dungeon teammates.)

Odds and ends 2: Family matters

So with the commute it is suddenly, and depressingly, a lot more difficult to stay in regular contact with my son. I used to take him home with me twice during the week, helping with his homework and then bringing him to school in the mornings, as well as keeping him every other weekend.

Weekends are still open (though I need to sleep more when they arrive). However, the most I can muster is to drive to Ginny's apartment in time to read Ben a bedtime story occasionally. We're currently on Taran Wanderer, fourth book in the Prydain series. Even though this book is a bit of a "one-off" from the rest of the series, it may well be my favorite. Along with plenty of action scenes and great villains (Yay Morda! Yay Dorath!) a lot of it is about Taran's character growth. The book is also very introspective, introducing some camouflaged philosophy about earning the respect of others rather than declaring that you are entitled to it by right of birth. There are many players in the book who are brazen hypocrites with a puffed up self image, and Taran makes quite a few of his own stumbling mistakes in judgment, but by the end of the book he's learned to see the difference much better. I think it is a great time for Ben to be hearing this stuff.

But I digress. To her credit, Ginny is very supportive of my sticking out this job. It's tougher on her to be Ben's overseer most of the time, and frankly I don't want to just be "weekend fun dad." But she agrees that sticking out the job is important to my career. She says that she can handle the homework support job, and -- while we've had our differences about education in the past -- this is backed up by the fact that Ben is still doing excellent work in school. I met with his first grade teacher Mr. Gray, who was just bubbling with enthusiasm about Ben as a student. Makes me proud.

So to work with this new arrangement, I will probably be shifting to 2 out of 3 weekends. This will play some havoc with my involvement in the ACA, but I think that can be resolved and I still love to do the shows.

Lynnea and I went to her cousin's wedding in Philadelphia. I met a lot of her family, and for the most part they are very nice. Her parents and I, while having some perspectives in common, don't see eye to eye on religion. We had some conversations about the shows that I do and the fact that they are perceived as offensive to some people. When I host this Sunday, I may spend some time discussing offensiveness if time allows. I will not discuss the family with my blog, although if you are a close friend you may have already heard more details on the discussion.

In any case, the wedding was enjoyable, and the cousin's family is full of talented musicians who played classical music very well. The reception was loads of fun, with great food and an open bar which I cautiously partook of. ;)

Performed in a concert the weekend before. We did Handel and Haydn with a new director, Ryan Heller. The concert was a smashing success, according to Lynnea, Ryan, and many of the chorus members and their friends in the audience. Ryan is very funny, enthusiastic, and good to work with.

Lynnea and I will be trick or treating with Ben this weekend. Ben will be Iron Man, and I finally figured out my own costume. I'm going to be Vinpricent. I have a huge sword, some spiky shoulder pads, and a breast plate. I'm not really sure how much +strength and hit rating the plastic equipment I bought will provide, so I might need to gem it heavily.

One more post coming.

Family gaming

Warning: Gaming post. If you play World of Warcraft or a similar game, you might find it cute and heartwarming. If you don't, you will likely get lost in nerd terminology pretty quickly. You have been warned.

On Saturday, I ran a Warcraft dungeon called Razorfen Kraul with Ben, Lynnea, and my mom. We have been doing this off and on, once every 2-4 weeks or so, for several months. Ben (who is seven) started playing the game a long time ago, but only dabbled with it until he finally brought a particular character, a druid, all the way up to level 16 because he loved playing in animal forms.

That's when the fun started, because I had been explaining to him about dungeon fighting and he wanted to try it. I was hesitant to take this step, because Ben has kind of a short attention span, and I didn't want to ruin the fun of any strangers we might add to our group. But when I ran the idea by Lynnea and mom, they were both willing to join us, and I know them to be very kind and patient with Ben. Normally dungeons are done in groups of five, but the other three of us had characters that were higher levels than Ben, so we thought we might be able to handle it.

So I promised we'd try a dungeon that weekend, and I drilled three rules into his head repeatedly:
1. The tank (me) is the leader. Stay BEHIND the tank at all times. Do not wander off on your own, under any circumstances.
2. Attack only what I am attacking. (For you non-WoW players, this is important because tanks have to work to force individual opponents to attack them, and not the more lightly armored and vulnerable players.)
3. Be nice to everybody. Say thank you. Congratulate them when they get something good.

I repeated these rules, and made him repeat them back to me, many times throughout the week.

We ran the Deadmines dungeon. To everyone's surprise, it went off successfully. It took us two trips on separate occasions to beat VanCleef. But even on the first trip, what was amazing was that Ben followed directions. Oh, I think he had to be reminded of the rules a few times, but he always apologized for his mistakes and corrected them. And more importantly, we all had fun.

That was a few months ago. Now our team of four is more experienced in dungeoning together, we're all in the range of 25-30, and we still try to team up on a semi-regular basis. We've done some character switching, and at this point we have gotten into a nice groove with a very good mix of characters. You can click on our names below to see their current information.

• Russell: Maddow. My character is still the tank, although I let Ben try tanking in bear form one time. She is a female human protection warrior who is named and styled after a certain TV and radio host.
• Lynnea: Geighdayr. She is our healer. Her character is a male human holy priest. It's pronounced, um, "gaydar."
• Ben: Siaindiss. Damage dealer. He's a male night elf feral druid. He used to specialize in spell attacks, but since he reached level 20 and learned to transform into a cat, he's been a feral-focused melee fighter. The named is pronounced "see-AIN-dis"; the random name generator picked it for him and he decided how to say it.
• Sheryl: Gleeful. She is a female gnome warlock who takes care of our long range spell casting damage.

So the four of us ran Razorfen Kraul this weekend. It's a lesser known dungeon in the horde-controlled Barrens, that few alliance characters ever bother visiting.

It was a long, tough instance. It's populated by pig-men who have an annoying tendency to run away and gather reinforcements when they are injured. As a result, we had a lot of difficult fights that turned out to be much longer than we anticipated, and required a lot of split second decisions by everyone.

We went into it mostly blind, without reading a guide on WoWWiki. I just kept an eye on the dungeon map and guessed which way to go. We had to backtrack a few times.

Ben saved the day on more than one occasion. As a druid, he can temporarily turn into a bear and substitute tanking if I die, or turn into an elf and substitute healing if Lynnea dies. He won't necessarily think to do this on his own, but if we shout instructions then he'll remember. Both changes kept the team from wiping out at different times. I think we all died twice in several hours of play.

Three of us play from the same house, while mom is on a long distance connection from Santa Fe. She and I keep in voice contact during gameplay over Ventrilo.

Anyway, we all had fun, and all gained multiple levels before calling it an afternoon. We didn't quite reach the last boss, but we all felt we had seen plenty of RFK.

Now we're high enough to do Gnomeregan, so that's coming up next time.

Speech for Keryn's wedding

Mawidge!

Mawidge is a dweam wiffin a dweam!

Some of you aren't laughing, but that's okay. It's probably because you have never seen "The Princess Bride" or read the book. And if you haven't seen the movie, then you obviously didn't grow up with Keryn and me, because one of us would have strapped you down and forced you to.

You see, my relationship to Keryn, like my relationship to many members of my friends and family, is largely defined by the entertainment that we have shared. We both love musicals, and cheesy melodramas, and fantasy movies. We have seen so many of the same movies, and played so many of the same games, that now I usually just have to say one single phrase to make her break down laughing.

To give you an idea of what new friends have to go through, Keryn has a neighbor named Charity, a young woman who recently turned 18. In the few years that Keryn has known her, she's forced her to watch a variety of stuff ranging from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" to "Fraggle Rock" to the musical episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". It's part of the cultural background of knowing us, and there WILL be a test later. If I say "Imagine you're a deer..." then you'd better be prepared to sit still for several minutes while Keryn reproduces Marisa Tomei's entire screechy diatribe about animal rights from "My Cousin Vinny." The only way to cut her off is to jump to the punchline and yell it first, so she can't get more mileage out of the rest of the speech.

That's the kind of relationship I have with my little sister, and I love her very much, even though she is, like all sisters, a little nuts. Let me tell you how nuts she is. Keryn asked me to serve as the Badchan for her wedding reception. Now unlike Keryn, I am a terrible Jew, I barely even knew what a Badchan is. She told me, but I forgot. So I did what any nerd of the information age would do: I looked it up on Wikipedia, which we all know is always 100% accurate and perfectly infallible. Wikipedia says that a badchan is "a joker or clown, who traditionally entertains before and after Ashkenazic Jewish weddings." Riiiiight. At least I figured out how to PRONOUNCE Ashkenazic.

But when I heard that Keryn wanted me to present a major speech for her wedding, naturally my first reaction was, "Are you insane? You know what I'll have to say about marriage right now, don't you???" As she knows very well, I'm in the process of a divorce, and I've been living in Keryn and Michael's guest room since late July. In fact, it was kind of a running joke for me, because several couples I knew appeared to break up within a few weeks of each other. So I speculated that I am the carrier of some kind of rare virus that destroys long-term relationships. I told my theory to Keryn, and she didn't miss a beat. "GET OUT!" were her exact words.

Yet somehow, even after Keryn and Michael have been exposed to my virus every single day for five months, they're still getting married. Ask me why. Go on, ask the divorced guy how to make a successful marriage.

Well, I don't know. How well do I really know Michael? After living with the guy for several months I should know him better than anyone else in my family does, but Michael is a remarkably hard guy to get to know. I mean, here's a typical example of an exchange with Michael, when I used to come home from work and he was watching TV.

Me: "Hi Michael!"
Michael (mumbling): "Uh."

Are they together because they share the same set of values and beliefs? Um, well, you tell me. One of Keryn's many endearing features is that she's a vegan. Not a vegetarian, mind you. Vegetarians don't eat meat but they can eat eggs, milk, and sometimes even fish. Vegans don't eat or use any animal products. And Keryn, because she is against any exploitation of animals, won't eat Jell-o because it contains traces of boiled animal bones -- no really, look it up. She has to ask for details about french fries because sometimes they are cooked in the same oil as other food including meat. She won't TOUCH anyone wearing leather, and she is at least somewhat squeamish about honey. Because of the captive bees, you know.

So Michael comes home one day with a bag from Whataburger, containing... a TRIPLE cheeseburger. Now I'm an enthusiastic carnivore myself, but even I feel like going into coronary arrest just from LOOKING at that much meat in one place. Michael doesn't just want to eat this massive thing, though... he makes a point of sitting in front of my sister and going (lip smacking) "Mmmmmm, this is so good!" Keryn just loves that, I'm sure.

Actually, though, it's not true that I haven't learned anything at all about my new brother-in-law from living with him. Michael has a great sense of humor. At least I THINK he does. Quite honestly, it's often impossible to tell whether he's joking or not, because Michael's style of humor is completely deadpan. He doesn't care whether you get the joke or not. He's like Andy Kaufman: he is happy just to entertain himself. Let me show you what I mean.

I went to a Round Rock Express baseball game with my son Ben, and Keryn and Michael, and a friend of ours named Andi. Andi is a woman who just loves sports of all kinds. Takes them very seriously. Keryn and I grew up in a non-sports household, so Keryn had to ask about the rules. Yes, she didn't know the rules of BASEBALL. Even I know how baseball works. Michael explained the rules in a way that, to me, was very obviously wrong. Only he didn't do it with a smile or a wink or a sarcastic tone of voice. He just told her very directly about the role of the halfback and the center guard and whatever. Finally when he got tired of answering questions, he told her "I'll tell you more at halftime."

Later, Andi pulled me aside. She was fuming. She asked "Did you hear what he said? He'll tell her at halftime. Halftime! THERE'S NO HALFTIME IN BASEBALL!" I paused for a moment and then said "Um... Michael was joking. At least I THINK he was." But Andi insisted: "No, I heard his tone of voice. He wasn't joking. He's completely serious. He has no idea what he is talking about."

Now I thought I understood Michael's personality well enough to see through the delivery, but she actually managed to make me doubt him. So I finally had to ask him: "Hey Michael... you really were kidding when you were talking about halftime in baseball... right??" And finally Michael's facade cracked, and he grinned real wide at me. Yes, of course he was joking. But if I hadn't asked him, I think he would have been just as pleased with himself if no one got the joke.

What do Keryn and Michael see in each other? Keryn drags Michael to dance lessons, and Michael goes along with it. Michael decides to join a country club, so he can, I don't know, play golf and wear a monocle and say "I say, let's have dinner and cognac at the club tonight." Keryn goes to the club.

These are two people who like to share life experiences. Okay, fine, so they're DIFFERENT life experiences. So what? To some extent they are both very open people, who will go along and try new things just to be participating in an activity together. They scuba dive. They watch reality cooking shows. I don't think Michael really likes Renaissance Faires, but I'm betting he went along with Keryn only because she agreed to make out with another girl in costume... oh yes you did! Now the story's out!

And they both love cats. BOY do they love cats. It's a good thing that Keryn is getting married, because it prevents her from being the crazy single lady with a house full of cats. These two poor kids had to cope with the death of not one but two cats in just the last few months. I feel very sad for them, they were wonderful cats... but now they're still left with six. And you know, I was surprised when Michael was hit just as hard emotionally by the losses as Keryn was. Sometimes Michael masks his emotions so well that I didn't realize he loves his own cats so fiercely.

The truth is, I am grateful to have Michael and Keryn in my life -- not least because of their overwhelming generosity in letting me stay at their place while I am still paying mortgage on a house that I'm not currently living in. Also, as I've struggled to settle into a job that will make the best use of my Masters Degree, Michael has been a great help in giving me interviewing tips. Of course, some of his tips involve the creative use of exaggeration... which is actually a polite way of saying "He told me to lie more often." In all seriousness, Michael knows how to get and keep a job, and he really helped to change my perspective. I realize now, more than I used to, that job interviews are just as much about showmanship and presentation as they are about raw technical knowledge. I am a better person for his advice.

And while I used to think that Michael maybe didn't like kids, he's warmed up to my son Ben in some surprising ways. Part of it is the annoying way that he tells Ben to steal candy from the cabinet when I'm not looking. But Michael also recently learned some magic tricks and spent a solid chunk of time using Ben as his guinea pig audience. Ben actually bonded with Michael a little bit. Don't worry, though, I'm not very threatened by a potential hostile takeover yet.

I'll admit that there have always been periods of time when my sister drove me crazy. But also, she's sent me a lot of pictures of us two as kids together. When you look at those pictures, you would think that there was never a time when I wasn't reading to her, or she wasn't hugging me, or we weren't having a great time being in each other's company. When Keryn was born, I used to wonder whether she would ever learn to talk. When she was three, I used to wonder whether she would ever stop. But after all the things I can see we shared together -- trips to Disneyworld, and completing enormous 3D jigsaw puzzles, and skiing trips -- I guess I have to accept that we loved each other a lot, and still do.

And Michael? Well, he's not Jewish. I don't care -- did I mention that I'm a very bad Jew? Like Tevye, I'm supposed to be offended that Keryn is marrying some goy. But I'm not. I suppose it's lucky for us that we have no surviving relatives in attendance who would really care about keeping the blood pure. Besides, did you know? The name "Hawthorne" actually comes the Yiddish word "Khaw-torn-im" -- which means "people who really love reality cooking shows." So Hawthorne, Jewish. There you go.

[Side note: Keryn's pre-wedding festivities included renting a theater to watch "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," and anyone who saw that will get the reference.]

In sitcom parlance, I now have a wacky brother-in-law, and there are worse things to have. So I wish Keryn and Michael the best success in keeping their marriage alive, and I hope you have a great trip to Fiji. You lucky dogs.

Deaths are sad

How's that for a headline?

Within the last few months, a couple of people whom I cared about died. One was the edgy comedian George Carlin. The other was my grandmother, Miriam Hoffman Wain, whom I knew for most of my life as "Greemie." While the two deaths seem unrelated, in a funny coincidence, I own one George Carlin book (Braindroppings) and I got it by liberating it from my grandmother's bookshelf. I don't know if she ever read it; she certainly didn't seem like a likely Carlin fan, but she saw me reading it and said I should take it.

A week after Carlin died, fellow comedian Jerry Seinfeld wrote a tribute in the New York Times, claiming that "George downright invented modern American stand-up comedy in many ways. Every comedian does a little George." Seinfeld told a story that I found very funny and even a little bit meaningful.

THE honest truth is, for a comedian, even death is just a premise to make jokes about. I know this because I was on the phone with George Carlin nine days ago and we were making some death jokes. We were talking about Tim Russert and Bo Diddley and George said: “I feel safe for a while. There will probably be a break before they come after the next one. I always like to fly on an airline right after they’ve had a crash. It improves your odds.”

See, that's funny. Carlin himself would have greatly appreciate the irony. An atheist like me, George Carlin almost certainly didn't BELIEVE the superstitious nonsense that he was saying to Jerry Seinfeld on the subject of death. And sure enough, right after he said it... he died. Much comedy is built out of irony, and this is exactly the sort of dark humor that I love.

If I had to analyze this as a joke, I would say that part of the reason it's funny is because, in reality, nobody knows when they'll die. Making a prediction about how "safe" you are based on unrelated events is just ridiculous, and almost nobody really has a chance to prepare for it.

Almost nobody. Greemie knew.

She had been sick for many years, undergoing chemotherapy. She was also much older than George Carlin, and it was obvious near the end that she was a little tired of being alive. I would call her occasionally, to cheer her up and update her on my life, and after only a few minutes it would be obvious she was trying to politely get off the phone.

I didn't take that as a slight against me. She had trouble hearing, and forgot things, and it seemed like she was embarrassed about people hearing her like that. Greemie took care of her own mother, Bess Hoffman, until she died at the age of 103. She'd had personal experience with how frustrating it can be to communicate with someone in her own condition.

She was my last living grandparent, and I'm afraid I wouldn't be truthful if I said that she was my favorite. I always felt that she was very cranky and hard to get along with, even when I was young. On the other hand, she was a financial wizardess, and often unbelievably generous when she was alive. Apart from occasional gifts, toward the end of her life she started flying the entire extended family to California, at her own expense, every year, so we could all be together for a catered Thanksgiving dinner. She was still a bit standoffish and uncomfortable even when we were all there for her, but it was obvious how happy it made her to see everyone else enjoying each other's company.

The last time I was there, I had a feeling that it would probably be the last time we could make it. So I said how much I loved her, and she accepted my hug but told me to stop being silly, or so concerned.

Her memorial service, which I attended two weeks ago, was almost like having one last Thanksgiving bash. Keryn and I stayed at her house, along with two cousins, and we were treated to dinners by our aunt Nancy (now manager of the estate), and there was one heck of a party after the service at her favorite temple. (For certain definitions of "heck of a party." If you like lots of family with catered items like smoked salmon, it was very enjoyable.)

At the service, my aunt Robbie told a very funny story and I learned something new. I'm a lifelong atheist, but I've always assumed that my grandmother was a devout Jew. I never really asked her much about her religious beliefs, and had no idea if she thought about an afterlife.

Robbie's story went something like this: Robbie asked where Greemie thought she would go when she died. Greemie said: "The Hills of Eternity." This sounds like an unusual but reasonable answer for a religious person -- until you learn that "Hills of Eternity" is actually the name of a local cemetery. So Robbie pressed further: "Yes, but I mean after that." Greemie thought a bit more, and said: "An urn." Finally, exasperated, Robbie said: "No no, I mean what do you believe in after you die?" And Greemie said "Oh, this is a serious question... Tinkerbell!"

That's her answer. It doesn't mean anything; but it was good for a laugh among all the gathered family. I guess that means that Greemie didn't know if she believed in an afterlife, but she sure believed in family, and she believed in making others happy. So that's pretty good to know.

As it happens, she had family all around her when she died. My mother tells me that she and her two sisters were at the hospital for the final few days, and that they had been singing her their favorite songs from childhood as she was lying there dying. I don't think that I would describe anything as a good way to die; but if I had to rank the possibilities, that would probably be pretty high up on the list.

One last thing I can say is that she was a huge technology buff, just like me. I neither understood nor appreciated this fully while she was alive. She was one of those people who would always forward every urban legend and "business opportunity" that she received by email, along with added information about how this seems really valuable and/or insightful. To be honest, it drove me crazy, and I even corrected some of the things she said from time to time.

But when you think about it, it's pretty unusual for someone her age to have caught on to computers and taken advantage of them so effectively. I introduced her to computer-based card games, and at the end of her life I found that her computer was stuffed with little games of her own. Not the kind of games I would play, obviously, but lots of goofy simple solitaire-type games that she downloaded from the internet or paid for.

I also remember arguing with her about CD-ROM drives when they came out -- she thought there was no important program that wouldn't fit on a floppy disk. And also, when Windows 3.1 was popular she asked me why her computer was running slowly even though she kept adding memory. So I looked, and told her it was because she had about eleventy billion windows open at the same time, and she should close some. She said she WANTED all those windows open at once, and wouldn't listen to me when I said she should just run one or two programs open at a time.

Actually, she was ahead of her time. I'm looking at my task bar right now... I have well over 30 windows open myself, including 4 folders, 8 documents, several emails, and a few dozen web sites. She just wanted to do stuff that computers weren't ready to do yet. She also, as I said, was a financial wizardess, and most of her money came from carefully managing her stock portfolio and rental properties. Online. She got it about the internet revolution. And she may not have understood spam, but she forwarded those junk emails because it was one small way to keep in touch with her family, without having to expose her vulnerability on the phone all the time.

So, that's the end of a life. I don't believe that there's anything left of Greemie except for an urn, and the memories of her that are held by me and others. But I don't know everything. Maybe she's off somewhere, enjoying herself now... at Tinkerbell. Wherever the heck that might be. And if she's not, then I'll still clap my hands a couple of times for her, and enjoy the good memories she left me with.

Pitfalls of a skeptical kid

Quite an eventful Christmas this year. Caitlin and Samantha have come to visit for the entire vacation period. Keryn is engaged. I've met most of the family of my future brother-in-law. They seem like nice folks.

One distant non-relation is a little girl who is 5, exactly Ben's age. She is my sister's fiance's brother's girlfriend's daughter. ("So what does that make us?" "Absolutely nothing... which is what YOU are about to become!") The two kids got along great. Ben's been missing two front teeth since some unfortunate horseplay when he was 5. This girl has lost a tooth in the natural way, which is a hopeful sign because it means that Ben's disfigurement won't stand out for much longer.

They got in the following conversation:

Girl: "The tooth fairy brought me five dollars!"
Ben (confidently): "But the tooth fairy isn't real!"
Girl (taken aback): "She is too! Or else who brought me five dollars?"

Ben didn't answer that one, although I like to think that he knows the real answer and just chose to let it drop. (He does know, after all, that parents bring Christmas presents.)

We made a conscious decision when he was born not to teach him to believe in made-up things like Santa and the tooth fairy. That was a tough decision, but he's just now coming to the age where our decision can ruin the fun for other parents.

Ginny and I had a couple of talks with him. I tried to explain to him that we felt it was the right decision not to pretend that imaginary things are real, because we didn't want to lie to him. But at the same time I struggled to justify why it's okay for other parents to lie to THEIR kids.

At one point he asked "So other parents tell their kids Santa is real to make them happy?" And I said "Yes, that's right." And he said "But I'm happy." Good kid. :)

Ginny had the immediate concern that Ben would blab about Santa to his best friend, who came over on Christmas morning to have breakfast with us after the presents were opened. She said "You CANNOT tell Calvin Santa is real. No, not even if he asks what Santa brought you. You can just say 'I got this and this,' and you don't have to lie about who brought it. You just don't say."

I told him it that this is just a game that some parents play. It's a secret. Since you know the secret, you get to share the game with the rest of us adults. So don't tell anyone the secret, or you'll spoil the game for other kids.

Speaking of schooling...

Ben started kindergarten today. Ginny and I have very different feelings about it. Ginny has had Ben staying at home with her for the last five years, and she's undergone some separation anxiety. She's worried about whether he'll adapt to the new environment, whether he'll behave, whether he'll eat well when he's not at home, and whether he'll be homesick.

I have different feelings about it: I'm really excited. Of course that's easy for me to say: I work all day, and I'm used to not having him constantly there anyway. So I mostly only see the good side of this new milestone in his life. I mentioned most of the reasons for my positive feelings in my earlier post about homeschooling. He'll be expanding his horizons, meeting lots of kids his own age, having a teacher with a different perspective on the world than ours. He'll spend time learning to read and draw and use numbers (which he's already very good at for his age). He'll have his time divided between two very different environments, and have raised expectations about how he spends the weekdays.

I met his teacher and some classmates last week. They all seem great. Mrs. Snyder struck me as a very cheerful and sweet young lady with a lot of teaching experience. We watched him go in this morning, and she took charge of the class right away.

I talked to him on the phone when Ginny picked him up. He sounded very tired but said he had had lots of fun. He couldn't be even a little bit specific about what kind of fun, so I had to pry it out of him with leading questions. :) But overall, I think it was a positive experience.

Letters from high school

Every year since my senior year in high school (about 14 years) my father has spent a day with the Humanities classes at Los Alamos High School. During the course of the year they bring in representatives from a variety of religious perspectives -- fundamentalist Christian, orthodox Jew, Unitarian, etc. My dad is their token atheist speaker.

The students are required to send letters to him expressing their thoughts about the talk, and he forwarded these letters to me. They are handwritten, so it would be a lot of work to copy them all, but here are a few choice comments.

"Everything you said made complete sense to me. I really liked how you asked us to challenge you. It seemed like you really wanted to know what we thought. You answered all our questions in depth and really thought about them. Thanks so much for all the information you gave us. It was fascinating!"

"It is a common misconception that atheists are immoral people. We are glad that you could show our class that. We liked how you explained that morality can come from human nature not just the supposed word of God."

"Even though I am a Christian, I was glad that you accepted everyone's beliefs and you explained your view on sensitive subjects like abortion and homosexuality. Overall I believe that your presentation, though not as flashy as the others, was the best one our Humanities classes had visit them."

"Our class seemed to greatly enjoy your presentation as many other speakers had Q&A but yours by far had the least empty space."

"Dear Dr. Glasser,
You have changed my life for the best. I will always look at religion and life in different ways."

Last weekend of class

I'm sitting in my Data Mining class now. My first semester will be over tomorrow. What a relief.

This month, and especially this week, have been very rough on me, and I think even rougher on Ginny and Ben. I've been either working continuously or meeting with somebody every night. Ben hardly sees me, and when he does try to get me to play with him, I usually have to shoo him away because I'm so busy. Ginny says he's been unusually unruly during the day, and she thinks it's because he's stressed too.

At 10:00 I'll be going up in front of the class with my partner, Chip, to do a ten minute presentation on a published paper (not ours) about gathering marketing information from blogs and message boards. This afternoon, I will be in a group of four presenting a system that we wrote to translate logic puzzles into visual solutions. The program parses natural language and then shows what categories it puts people in. Then tomorrow, back in Data Mining, I'll be showing our data on how gun laws affect crime rates. That paper is 14 pages. I'll probably put both papers up on my web page sometime soon.

So anyway, I worked my ass off this month, and I'm ready to take a big break. I still have to go to work, of course, but just working is a piece of cake compared to working in the day AND doing class work at night.

We're planning to go to Sea World soon. No responsibilities until my next class starts in a month. A very welcome change.

For my mom on Mother's Day

Memories of growing up with my mother, Sheryl Glasser

I think most of my earliest memories of my mother involve co-counselling. Of course I had no idea what co-counselling meant at the time; I just remember going to a lot of weekend retreats and spending time with unusual people talking about their problems to one another and screaming into pillows. There were also some kind of off the wall games and activities involved; I dimly remember what seemed like jumping off the roof of a house onto a mattress and having tons of fun. Although since I was very young at the time, it was probably a much shorter jump than I'm picturing right now.

Mom never really stopped being a hippie. Sheryl Glasser has always been the dreamer, the entertainer, and the diplomat of the family. She's into new-age religious practices that many of my family find silly, but she has an enormous heart. For one thing, she has this incredible ability to empathize with other people. She always taught me that the most important thing, when you disagree with somebody, is to be able to understand their point of view so well that you can say it to them in their own words and have them agree that what you just said is fair.

Another of my earliest memories is that we used to watch "The Incredible Hulk" TV series together on our old black and white TV. In fact, it was years before I realized that the Hulk was supposed to be green. But mom loved superheroes, and she was extremely patient when I would run around outside with her and pretend to be turning into the Hulk. I couldn't rip out of my own shirt, of course, so I would wear one of dad's button-up shirts and then slowly and carefully undo each button, one at a time, all the while roaring ferociously. This must have required mountains of patience for her.

(Ben loves playing the Hulk too. But he's still too young to see the TV show or recent movie, so he doesn't do the whole shirt ripping thing. His version of the Hulk is stomping around the house yelling "Rarrrr!" and scaring the heck out of the cats.)

That's the thing about mom, she loves to do things with other people just for a chance to participate in something that THEY like to do. It doesn't matter if that's not what she'd be doing on her own, she can enjoy it just for the vicarious pleasure of being a part of your life.

I was into text adventure games on the computer, and so she would listen to me babble about them. She even tried them with me every once in a while. I remember being a young adult and playing a game called Spellcasting 101. There was a sequence where you have to look at a series of about 100 strange objects and guess what their names might be, and they were all bad puns. A pack of canines were called "Wolfgang." A couple of British toilets turned out to be named "Lulu." A bunch of uncooked bread smeared on the room's vertical surfaces? "Waldo." I remember that puzzle in great detail because Mom was there with me, trying to guess what all the crazy puns could be.

One year when I was 11, we travelled to Mexico to visit a colleague of dad's. One afternoon after we'd all had our fill of wandering around Mexico City with people trying to sell stuff to us, she decided to take me and my sister out to see a movie. We found out that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II was playing at the local theater, probably billed as "Los Ninjas Tortugas" or something like that. Now I'm sure she would NEVER have chosen to see Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II on her own, but she wanted us to have a good time and we reasoned that this would be the easiest to follow in Spanish. Then it turned out that the movie was in English, with Spanish subtitles. So we were all laughing at the lame jokes about a second before the rest of the theater would finish reading.

But Mom wasn't always watching shows and movies just because she wanted to share the experience; she really was a serious entertainment buff. She was a Trekkie from a long time back, and she was always willing to watch a new series about sci-fi, fantasy, or superheroes whenever I recommended it to her. In my college years, we both regularly watched Lois & Clark and Quantum Leap, and we'd sometimes call each other to talk about the episodes.

I'm pretty sure she was also mostly responsible for getting us to see a stage melodrama every year in Colorado. It became a family tradition that after they picked me and Keryn up from the Ranch Camp, we would go to a Gilbert and Sullivan festival and then a melodrama. The melodramas were big overproduced comedies in which the audience was encourage to cheer for the hero, sigh and say "Awwww" for the heroine, and boo and throw popcorn at the villain. A few years ago, mom paid for Ginny, the kids and me to fly to Colorado so we could do that one more time.

She was also a big Disneyland aficionado. Since her family lives in California, we had a lot of excuses to go out there for several years. And when Keryn graduated high school the same year I graduated college, the three of us took a special vacation to Florida so we could spend most of a week hitting the various Disneyworld parks, as well as Universal Studios.

She tells me that when I was a little kid, a friend asked her what it was like to be a mom. She replied, "He jumps on the bed and tells me about his dreams." That is the kind of thing that would sum up the experience of motherhood for her: being entertained by listening to other people's experiences.


Although I grew up in a family of atheists or (in mom's case) near-atheists, mom still insisted that we never lose track of our Jewish heritage. It was completely because of her that we attended Temple every once in a while; observed and celebrated all major Jewish holidays; and had semi-regular fancy dinners on Shabbat (Friday nights), where we all said prayers in Hebrew (including the kids, as soon as we were able). It was also probably because of her influence that I stayed in Saturday school at temple, had a bar mitzvah, and went to a Jewish summer camp called "The Ranch Camp" for two years. I have nothing but good memories about these for the most part, although studying for the bar mitzvah got tedious at times. When I wanted to slack off from studying my Torah portions, mom was right there helping me slack well. And when I was actually working on it, she was there encouraging me.

The bar mitzvah itself was great. It was managed by a wacky feminist Rabbi named Lynn Gottlieb, and it makes perfect sense to me that mom picked her -- although some of the people in her family who took Judaism more seriously referred to the event as "an abomination." I had my Torah portions down pat, even using a built-in musical scheme to sing the passage. It was a section on justice in the ancient world, including the overused and abused phrase "eye for an eye." And I got carried around on a chair, which was great.

One part I remember from Hebrew school was having a part in the Purim play. I got to be Haman, the bad guy in the story. I didn't want to be the bad guy, but mom convinced me that it would be the most fun part. She was right. And she made my costume, including a big beard out of brown cordoury. I remember shouting angrily as I got dragged away by two kids playing guards, and having the time of my life.

Mom was also the den mother in my cub scout troop. I don't remember cub scouts all that well, but I do remember fighting the other scouts with the wooden sword she had made me.

My Mom was also an accomplished musician. She played cello and piano, and loved to sing. I remember her programming our first computer to play Bach music using a series of beeps. She came into my grade school one year and taught the class about music. She taught everyone about Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" and Haydn's Surprise Symphony. She told a story about each piece and played the music for us. It must have been quite a job keeping a room full of kids that age interested in classical music. I think she pulled it off.

When we lived in Alabama, mom remotely worked for a company in Paris, France. When I was eight we all took a trip to Paris, I think (I hope) at company expense. I have strong memories of visiting the Louvre and other museums, eating in French restaurants and cafes, and trying to cross the street against scary French traffic. Keryn says her only memory of the place was climbing a lot of stairs. (We walked up Notre Dame and the Arc de Triomphe, as well as much of the way up the Eiffel Tower.)

Another thing mom did exceptionally well was cook. I remember some of my favorite meals when I lived with her were corned beef with cabbage and leg of lamb. When we moved to Santa Fe she learned to cook posole and carne adovada. After our trip to Paris, she started making canard a l'orange (duck with orange sauce).

Whenever I was having trouble in school, mom was always the one who had the patience to sit down with me and work it out. I remember pulling an all nighter side by side with her in freshman year, working on a huge packet of biology homework that I should have spent the entire weekend. She said, "Russell, it's about time you started to like coffee." We ground through hours of material, and she always kept me focused even when my attention started to drift and I was trying to procrastinate. The reason I remember the words "Endoplasmic reticulum" to this day is because she kept drilling me on it.

She did the same thing for me on my SAT vocabulary a few years later, and I think I got a 710 on the verbal in the end.

Another thing my mom has always been good at is playing the diplomat. Whenever I've had to deal with any kind of crisis or family conflict, mom is always the first person I call. Even when she's busy, she's nearly always willing to set some time aside and talk about things and give me suggestions about the best path of action that will make everyone happy. I have called on this kind of insight many times over the years, especially at times when my wife and sister -- both extremely strong-willed individuals -- were fighting with each other. Somehow she seems to always know how to defuse a situation.

She also knew how to talk sense into me during times when I was determined to be a jerk to others myself. There was a time, during my surly teenager years, when I was fighting with a particular teacher all the time. When I told her how I told off this teacher, she said "Russell, that's a terrible way to behave. You should apologize to her." I said, "But mom, she's an awful teacher and she's being unfair to me." She said "It doesn't matter. It NEVER hurts you to be the first one to apologize, and she might treat you better if you do. You don't have to think you really mean it, but you need to say it to her so you can make the first move." This advice turned out to be exactly right, and it has served me well throughout the years. Sometimes she has had to repeat it during fights with my wife, which is another time when I always call her.

There was also the time when I was 18 and discovered the big world of online message boards for the first time. Mom had signed us up for the Prodigy network and I basically barged into a board for religious (and un-religious) teens and acted like an idiot for a while. Everybody turned on me, including a bunch of the atheists who might otherwise have been on my side. When I told her on the phone how good I was at telling them all off, she said "Russell, why do you enjoy making people angry at you? I don't understand." That was another time when I discovered the value of a sincere apology. Within a few more weeks, I had made a lot of those people into online friends.

Finally, mom has been a wonderful grandmother. She can't get enough of her grandson, Ben. Whereas Ben has often had a hard time warming up to people and tends to get scared of those who come on too strong, he loved his grandma right away. Every time we visit, I worry a little bit that he won't remember her. But as soon as he catches sight of her, he gets a huge smile on his face and yells "Hi gramma!" Or when he was smaller, "geema".


What I've learned from my mom:

• That the first way to get people to like you is to understand them.
• That it's much better to "lose face" and apologize than carry a grudge forever.
• That entertainment is often the best bonding experience.
• That other people are entitled to their beliefs, even if you think they are silly, and there is even something beautiful about other people's silly beliefs.
• That it's okay to talk about your feelings, and talking can help you get over them.
• That it's okay to relax and enjoy yourself, as long as you always keep sight of your important goals.
• That imagination is cool.
• That a large part of how happy you are in your relationships depends on how you communicate with the people who come into your life.

This essay is my own little communication with my mom, because she's still with me, and will be for a long time, and I want her to feel good about herself today.

Happy Mother's Day.

Christmas in the heartland

I went to Kansas for a week to visit my in-laws. I would like to make a few observations.

I live in a very red state, but Austin is a blue county, so we're a community of those people who don't have, you know, "moral values".

As we drove across Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, I couldn't help noticing some things about the heartland. First, no piddly little run-down town is so small that they don't have a big church as the main attraction, and usually several. If the church isn't easily visible from the road, you can still see a big sign saying "Church of Christ" or some such. In many cases, towns with populations under 2000 have churches that are just as enormous and lavish as those in the big city, even if most of the other buildings in the immediate area are pathetic shells with broken windows that have clearly been abandoned for years. The Baptist churches are always the biggest and gaudiest.

What I'm trying to convey here is that you enter the more "red" areas, the amount of church space per capita increases a lot. And not only that, so do the number of bars and strip clubs per capita. We kept passing areas where there would be two or even three bars in the same shopping center block.

More churches, more bars and strip clubs. Hmmmm, interesting. Kinda gets you thinking about where the values connection to moral values really comes in.

Enforced praying

I heard a story from my stepdaughter last weekend. She lives with her dad in "the heartland" -- the center of Texas. She considers herself an atheist; her dad used to be an atheist but is now questionable. Dad's wife is a Christian.

At her junior high school, they had one of those "pray around the flagpole" events where students meet before school. This is generally not a problem since it is supposed to be organized by students and ignored by the school administration.

Only not in this case. Her first class is P.E., and her coach instructed everyone to be there at the earlier time in the morning. He said "If anyone has any religious objections then you have to come and tell me and I'll let you off." But if anyone doesn't show up and doesn't voice a religious objection, they have to undergo "attitude adjusters." According to stepdaughter, that means extra laps and push-ups.

So my stepdaughter dutifully told the coach that she's not coming because she's an atheist. Everyone heard her. One girl told her they can't be friends anymore. Many others picked arguments.

People think that school prayer is harmless, but I think this is a good example of what happens when the school gets involved with religion. That coach was way out of line. She shouldn't HAVE to tell him about her religious beliefs. She shouldn't be put in the situation of making her classmates hostile at her. It's frankly none of his damn business.

Seems to me that teachers taking it upon themselves to identify who belongs to what religion is the first step in something more sinister. I would expand on that, but I don't want to invoke Godwin's law.

For my dad on Father's Day

Memories of growing up with my father, Alan Glasser

It's father's day, and the beginning of my second year as an actual father. I would like my father to know how much I appreciate him.

In the last five years, dad lost both of his parents, Milton and Jean Glasser. I had not visited my grandparents for several years before they died, and I felt very guilty about this. In fact, I was afraid that Grandma Jean had never even seen pictures of me with my family, because I am a notorious procrastinator and I never sent any. I posted plenty of pictures on my web site, but Jean was a little too old to catch up with the online trend, so I would have had to send them by regular post. Luckily, dad told me that he had brought her pictures himself. I was extremely grateful.

A few weeks after she died, we all got together and had an informal memorial service for both Jean and Milton -- dad, mom, me, my sister Keryn, and dad's wife Marg-Anne. I had a lot of things on my mind to say about my grandparents, but when the time came I felt too emotional to be coherent. I could only say things in bits and pieces. Dad read a very moving tribute that he had written about them. I thought it was a shame that they didn't get to hear it in person.

Well, I'm sure that dad has many decades of life left, but I don't want to feel the same way when he's gone. That's why I needed to write this now.

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Early years

The earliest memory I have of my dad is of him fighting a big blue hairy monster to rescue my yellow lollipop.

Of course the monster wasn't real, but the lollipops were. There was a mall in Princeton Junction which sold huge round yellow lollipops, and I always got them. I guess I was about three years old. My dad was a born story teller, and he made up a story for me to make sure I would never be scared of monsters.

In the story, a big blue monster (probably Harry Monster from Sesame Street) tried to steal my lollipop, but dad ran out to the parking lot and tackled him, and not only did the monster buy me a new lollipop, but he had to apologize to me personally. It was great. I don't know how many times I heard that story, but judging from how well I remember it, it must have been a lot.

Dad read a lot of stories to me, and he played a lot of physical games with me that I still remember. He would lie on his back on the bed and bounce me on his knees, saying: "To market, to market, to buy a fat PIG! Home again, home again, jiggity jiggity jig!" I can also remember him telling me about my name. I was named after Bertrand Russell, and he told me that Bertrand Russell was a mathematician. What's a mathematician? It's a person who "plays with numbers". I didn't know what that meant, but it sounded like fun.

As a scientist, dad has always valued knowledge, critical thinking, and creativity. Many times I have been discouraged by an academic subject, and he has encouraged me to stick with it and find the interesting parts. When I was first starting school, I wasn't very good at math, because it seemed to heavily rely on memorizing things on flash cards. Dad told me to be patient, because things would get better. When I got older, he bought me books with mathematical games in them. He took me and some classmates to a lecture by a logician named Raymond Smullyan when I was 11 or 12, and it had a profound effect on me. Once I understood that math could be fun and engage your mind, as opposed to the way I had learned it in elementary school, I really learned to appreciate it.

I can also remember a similar experience with biology. I had a terrible biology teacher in high school, Mr. Max. Everything about the class seemed like rote memorization. Dad kept telling me, "Don't worry, when you get to the part about evolution, it will all make sense. Biology is much more exciting when you understand how it works through evolution." I kept an eye on the evolution chapter, and kept waiting to get there... and we skipped it. No explanation given. It turned out that Mr. Max was either a creationist himself, or afraid to start controversy by teaching the subject. Dad was livid; he went to the principal of the school and raised a big stink. I don't know what happened in the end -- I still didn't learn evolution in that class -- but I appreciated the effort. Maybe future students benefitted from this. As for me, dad gave me and my best friend Gil our first lecture on evolution that day in the car. Gil was Catholic, and he always had the idea that it was bad to believe in evolution, but he was surprised that it was so simple and obvious. He was also surprised when dad told him that the pope had said evolution was okay. I made a point of taking a full course on evolution when I got to college, and I finally saw his point. Evolution DID make biology all make sense. After I graduated, I started reading more and more about the subject, and now I am even something of an expert on the creation/evolution controversy.

All through my high school years, we commuted to Los Alamos together. We lived in Santa Fe, and Los Alamos (where dad worked at the lab) was a 45 minute drive away. It would have been easier to go to school in Santa Fe, but my parents agreed that Los Alamos had a much better school system, and Santa Fe was reputed to have something of a problem with gangs. So, the result was that my dad spent an hour and a half together every week day in the car. Sometimes we made good use of the time, sometimes we didn't. For the first year we drove with my best friend Gilbert Quintana, who went to LAHS with me until his sophomore year, and then he decided to go back to Santa Fe. During that year, dad gave us a crash course education in classical music. He had us identify composers and types of music. Every time he played a fugue, he would give a dollar to the first one who yelled "Fugue!" In exchange, Gil gave us a crash course in his favorite rock music. That didn't stick with dad as long, but he was very patient about it.

Those were four years I spent as sort of a surly teenager, so I know that dad had to put up with a lot sometimes. Sometimes we would argue about homework or bad grades. Sometimes I would just sit there in sullen silence and not talk. Sometimes I would reach over aggressively and turn off the radio, which was usually playing NPR, so I could do some last minute homework before school. There were some personality clashes, but dad didn't let it hurt our relationship.

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Philosophies

I learned to be a staunch, outspoken atheist from dad. Dad comes from a long line of atheists; his father and grandfather both were, which made me a fourth generation atheist. My parents were understandably worried that I would get into trouble with the other kids, especially since we moved to Alabama at about the same time that I was starting to come to grips with atheism. Dad took a job at a college in Alabama, and my parents told me a story of how they went to visit there before we moved. During their visit, they spotted a theater that was playing Monty Python's "The Life of Brian", a sacreligious farce that lampooned the life of Jesus. They said to each other, "Okay, this place can't be all that bad." The next day when they were leaving, they drove past the same theater and people were picketing it.

Well, dad's fears were well founded in a way. I started arguing with my neighborhood friends when I was six or seven. The first time I was stumped by a question was when one of them asked me, "If there's no God, then who made the world?" I went right back to dad and asked him, "What do we believe, that The Nothing made the world?" And he explained some arguments to me. When word got out around school that I was an atheist, I was treated as something of an oddity. Kids used to come up to me after school and show their friends: "Here, watch this. Do you believe in God?" "No," I said. And they would walk away, saying "Isn't that weird?" I don't think I ever got beaten up by anyone for that, though. From dad, I learned that atheism was a simple, logical position to take, and he never acted like it was a position to take because it was counter-cultural, so I didn't either.

As I grew up, I became more confident in my atheism. I got involved in several different venues where I learned how to argue. One was the high school debate club, which involved staying in Los Alamos late at night once a week. Another was the message boards on Prodigy, which we signed up for when I was 18. When I argued with people, I often had to come back to dad and asked him what he would say about this or that point. Even as I went through college, he was usual the first person I called when I had a question about most academic subjects, especially politics.

Dad also helped to launch my life long passion for computer gaming. I first saw "Pac-Man" when I was six years old, at the Godfather's Pizza place that we always went to. I made my mom play it, but I wouldn't play it myself. The game scared me, the way you always had to run from these monsters that were chasing you. Everybody dies in the end. For a long time I loved to watch those games but I wouldn't play them. Finally, one day he gave me a quarter in a supermarket, and said "Here, I order you to go play that game." I even remember that the game was "Jungle Hunt". Once I played it, I realized that it was actually fun, and "dying" really wasn't that bad.

We were early adopters of home computers. We had our first IBM PC around 1983, when they were first available. A lot of other kids had Ataris at home, but I don't think anyone else had a computer for many years. Some of dad's friends designed PC based clones of commercial arcade games, so we always got a lot of free games. Dad and I actually had a friendly rivalry in some games. He always had the high score at "PC-Man". One day I came very close to beating his score, and he was right behind me, watching and encouraging. I almost did it, but I died needing ten more points -- which I would have gotten by eating just ONE MORE DOT. I never made it that far again. However, I think I finally broke his record at Frogger.

It's funny remembering this, because later when I became a much bigger game enthusiast, I didn't really think that Dad liked games for some reason. But he used to play games with me a lot, and I can remember walking into our home office at 3 AM and finding him playing Solitaire. Later, he would take me on special trips to the arcade to watch people play Dragon's Lair, the first LaserDisc based game, which was hand drawn by the former Disney animator Don Bluth.

It didn't stop there, though; dad made it a point of getting me to learn how to program too. One of the first magazines for kids about computers was "Enter", and I wanted a subscription mostly because they had articles about games. But dad would only buy me a subscription if I promised to do some of the BASIC programming exercises in the magazines. I knew how to print my name and do simple "goto" logic, but that wasn't enough. I remember how he tried to teach me about arrays. It was frustrating at first, and I just didn't get it for a while, but eventually I did it. Later, he made me write a program that he used to illustrate some simple trignometry. I wouldn't get any trig in class for years to come, but he got me started.

In my sophomore year of high school, he convinced me to take an advanced programming class in Pascal. It was taught by my geometry teacher from Freshman year, Mr. Laeser. Dad recognized a truly inspiring teacher when he saw one, and knew I should spend more time with Laeser. I was the youngest student in that class, but I did very well in it. At the end of the year, Mr. Laeser made a competition to see whose program could output the most consecutive prime numbers in five minutes. Thanks to a lot of extra instruction from my dad, I won. Well, WE won. I was in fierce competition with another student named Yoseif right up until the day of the contest. Even Mr. Laeser's teaching aide had a much slower program in the end.

When I went to college, I started out as a physics major, just like him. But after almost two years of physics classes, I realized my heart wasn't really in it. I was not making bad grades in physics, but I realized that I wasn't nearly as interested in the subject as I was in programming. Dad always told me that you should plan to center your life around doing what you enjoy, and he never pushed me to go into the same career he had. In fact, he encouraged me to switch my major to computer science once it became clear that I wasn't as turned on by physics.

Another thing I remember is that dad was a guy who could take crazy ideas and make them become reality. When I was 11 years old, he took my sister and me to see a local production of "H.M.S. Pinafore". It was a wonderful performance, and it made me a devoted fan of Gilbert and Sullivan for the rest of my life. But the real surprise was when my dad suggested that we get the entire family to perform "The Mikado" for my Bar Mitzvah party. To show that he was serious, he actually went out and hired the director of Pinafore, Manos Clements.

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Looking back

When I tell my wife about my experiences with my father, she often tells me she's amazed that we got along so well. I suppose it is a bit abnormal, in a way. In fact, dad commented on this once, when we were driving to Los Alamos. He said, "You know, kids your age aren't supposed to get along with their fathers." "Yeah, so I've heard," I replied. "We really ought to try harder to have a normal relationship," he said. "Go ahead," I said. In a completely flat voice, he said, "You rotten kid." "Get off my back, old man," I answered in the same voice. Then we laughed and he said "My heart's not really in it."

Well, it would be wrong to say that we had a perfect relationship. I think we had an unusually good one, but I also remember that dad had a temper which usually manifested itself when I was having academic problems. I nearly got kicked out of a private school when I was 12 for failing to do my work. I also got some very bad grades in both my first quarter at high school, and my first quarter at college. Those were some tough times for both of us, and dad would often vent his anger by shouting or using heavy sarcasm.

Nevertheless, when I look back on those times, they seem to pale into insignificance compared with the good memories. As an adult, my relationship with him is better than ever. We discuss politics by email, we recommend books and articles for each other to read, and we chat on the phone almost every week. He has consulted me several times about computer issues, making it clear that he values my opinions in the areas where I am an expert. That makes me feel valuable and proud of myself.

Some of the things I have learned from my dad are:

• That knowledge and intelligence are valuable.
• That you shouldn't believe or do things just because other people are doing them; nor should you only do the opposite of what everyone does.
• That life is meaningful because of the experiences we have, and the people we share them with.
• That you shouldn't assume people are stupid just because they disagree with you -- they may have fundamentally different ways of looking at life which make sense to them.
• That doing something you enjoy is one of the most important career choices you can make.
• That crazy ideas are worth chasing.
• That true creativity is one of the rarest commodities in the world.

Now that I have been a father for a little over a year, I realize more than ever how much I learned from my dad. I find myself searching on Amazon for the same books that he used to read to me. My most recent purchase was "The Great Blueness". It was out of print, but I took the time to find a reasonably priced used copy. I also do the "To market" chant with my son, and play Gilbert and Sullivan for him.

I hear a lot of stories from people who regret that they never got a chance to tell their loved ones how much they mean to them. I don't want to be one of those people. I love you, dad. Happy Father's Day.

Introducing... mini-me

Benjamin Jack Glasser was born on Sunday May 26, at 1:26 PM. He weighed 7 pounds 13 ounces, and was 20 1/4 inches long. Both mother and child are in good shape, and I'll be home from work all week.

Some fundamentalist on the Motley Fool took the opportunity to make a crass dig about abortion:

Congratulations on becoming a father! Glad God saw fit to allow him to enter the world!

But at what point did Benjamin become a "mini-me"?

If he had died six weeks ago, would he have been just a non-Benjamin, "mini-non-Kazim"?

Would you have lost the son you have now, or just some fetal tissue?

I replied:

If there had been a miscarriage a few days after conception, as is common with very many births, we would have lost the son we have now.

If we had not chosen to have sex on that particular night, we would have lost the son we have now.

In either case, we might have had a different son or daughter on a different date. And we would love him or her just as much.

But he's here now, and he's the one we love now. Hypothetical situations don't apply anymore. If we hadn't intended to have a son or been prepared to care for one, then we wouldn't have. But we did, and we do.