Dirt!

I'm so relieved to see research like this out there:

Babies and dirt go together just fine

A recent study suggests that early exposure to allergens strengthens babies' immune systems and protects them from allergies and asthma later on. Read Dr. Parker's entire "Healthy Children" post on the topic (there are a couple caveats), then throw away your antibacterial soap, give the feather duster the day off, turn up the music, and roll around on the floor with your baby. As my man Dr. P says: "Life is messy and maybe that's not such a bad thing after all!"
link

I am allergic to cats, pollens, dust, etc. and yet I am an abysmal housekeeper. Lets hope Boyo benefits from my lack of cleaning! We have the optimal set-up: two cats, one dog and dust.

Marriage Schmarriage

One of the big news items here is whether to have Minnesotan voters decide whether gay marriage should be outlawed on the November ballot. This issue drives me nuts. Whoever wants to be married should be able to be and the bigots that want to limit the right should just mind their own business since it doesn't affect them anyway. There are a lot of issues that no one is talking about though. Consider:

• Why don't we start campaigning to scrap the institution of marriage altogether. This would have the extra bonus of challenging the whole construct of the nuclear family and force us to develop some alternative methods of health care coverage since so many people are covered by their spouse's insurance.
  
  
• Why are Republicans against gay marriage? You'd think they'd be all for increasing the tax base by counting so many dual-income-no-kids couples in a higher tax bracket. Not to mention the boon to the economy as thousands (millions?) more people bought into the industrial wedding complex at 12-50k per wedding. Let's get some estimates on this people!
  
  
• When do a lot of these kooks that are against gay marriage ever have to deal with the issue in real life? A lot of them probably think of gays as some kind of mythical creature, like unicorns, since everyone gay they encounter is probably in the closet or is a larger than life creation of the media.
  
  
• Let's figure out an alternate way to deal with some of these marriage issues. For example, legal agreements that are recognized by hospitals in case of emergencies, adoption law reform, working to validate gay couples in our circles of family and friends since there are fewer formal opportunities to do that, etc.
  
  
• Lobbying for a ballot measure to legalize gay marriage instead of letting the fearmongers drive the debate.

Music Nonstop

Now that my office has moved to a slightly more isolated part of the building I am listening to music while I work more often. My fave is last.fm where I can plug in a band like Architecture in Helsinki and hear similar artists. I guess I didn't realize that this was also a social networking thing. There are groups you can join and you can make friends. I now have my first friend since a Finnish teenager added me to his friends list. Who knew you could find out you had so much in common with someone across the world.?

Another cool feature, being able to add a chart of the music you've been listening to on your blog:

Invention #2: Short Pants

You know how boys used to wear short pants and then graduated to long pants when they were fully grown? Why can't we do the same thing with baby clothes? How about pants with snaps down the sides- they start out with a cuff folded up several times and the snaps hold the cuffs up. As the legs get longer you take the snaps down a notch and get a longer leg. You could have some cool, patterned fabric lining the pants.
















I haven't bought any baby clothes for Boyo yet because my mom is such a gifted second hand shopper. But if I did it would sure burn me if I bought something that he grew out of after wearing it only a couple of times.

Rhymesayer's Settin' to Bust Out of the Minneapple

MNSpeak has a nice round up of recent press coverage on Atmosphere. I'm so excited to go to the show tomorrow night. It caps off their tour and I hear there are a lot of special guests scheduled to celebrate their return home.

Invention #1: Sensory Gloves

On occasion I get crazy invention ideas so I am going to start adding them here. The latest is a 'Sensory Glove'. This would allow workers to have hand protection but not sacrifice touch sensitivity. For example, if you are working with dangerous chemicals but still need to feel small computer parts on an assembly line or for surgeons or if you are digging through rubble and need to feel where the glass pieces are.

The fingertips and palm area would be covered with pinhead sized sensors. The inside of the glove would have and array of microscopic 'wires' that would transmit the outside sensor signals to the skin of the user. That way the user could remotely feel what is on the other side of the glove.

Coco Verde

Mango Salsa

My new favorite recipe is for Mango Salsa:

1 mango cut into small cubes
1/4 cup diced onion
1/4 cup finely chopped cilantro
hot sauce to taste- I use 1/2 tsp Marie Sharp's carrot hot sauce

Mmmmm

Kiva

I love the idea of Kiva! This site allows you to make microloans to African businesses. It is amazing how a small investment in American terms can make such a huge difference for someone's quality of life in the developing world. See also the picture of the Hippo Roller. I can't imagine how much work it is to go fetch the water you need from miles away every day. Go Boing Boing for publicizing these great ideas.

Fire, Stilts and Large Puppets

It is not ALL on the Internet but I'm trying to add more. Every year Barebones Productions puts on a Halloween production at a local park. Every year I start searching online for which park it will be at and have trouble finding out. I suppose I am not hooked in enough with the puppet subculture in the cities to hear about it word of mouth like I'm supposed to. In any case I got the info on the 2005 production, "Foretold" and trekked off on a cold Halloween evening to watch a giant puppet show in the dark.

It was a story of a village of the dead who hid in their houses because they were afraid of moving on to the next world. It had all the elements that make the Barebones Halloween show so memorable- huge puppets, fire, people on stilts. . .

The best puppet was a 10 foot tall T-rex skeleton that moved incredibly fluidly. The best moment was walking from the first stage will hundreds of people carrying canterns (lanterns made out of cans with holes punched in the side) to the finale at the river. Then there were fire-twirlers and rafts rowing up to take the village of the dead to the other world.

After the show a huge barge came up the river and eerily lit the fog swirling off the surface. I'm sure the bargemen were a bit baffled at the crowd of hundreds of people waving at them from the bank at 9pm.

Favorite quote of the evening from my friend C: "T is learning fire-twirling. Maybe she can be in the show next year. Maybe not- she might not fit in with those fire-twirlers who wear leather, ride unicycles and kick ass."

I Wish I Were Cool/Geeky Enough to Knit

There are so many awesome knitting projects popping up out there that I really wish I had the crafting chops to tackle. In addition to the knit robots I mentioned in an earlier post there's Baby's First DNA Model (pictured, via daddytypes), Bike Helmet Ear Warmers in the first edition of MenKnit Magazine, and Crocheting Hyperbolic Space on Make's new craft blog.

NYC

We just made reservations to go to NYC for a friend's wedding. It should be interesting travelling with a 9 month old. I'm hoping that Boyo will stay true to the personality he's developing and be MORE entertained when we're out of the house and LESS fussy when there is a lot going on.

LCD Soundsystem

Was it a rock show? Was it a dance show? I kept going back and forth while watching LCD Soundsystem last night. I expected a much larger crowd since this band was one that really grabbed me this year. Electronic music is just not as big here as your straight-out indie rock.

My friend H said that James Murphy used his voice like an instrument and I have to agree. It must take an enormous amount of effort to sing with that much energy for that long. They put on a good show.

H is also a new mom and has not been to many concerts recently. There is something wonderful about really loud speakers.

The Culture Industry

On the heels of my DIY thoughts my friend in cultural studies was telling me about the theories of Theodor Adorno. I love how theory.org.uk has a discussion about how "capitalism fed people with the products of a 'culture industry' - the opposite of 'true' art - to keep them passively satisfied and politically apathetic" and yet has this cheeky GIF on their page (check the site if the GIF isn't displaying the little lip curl correctly):

I Heart DIY

I love to see people making their own entertainment and operating outside the "You must buy this to be happy" mindset. Here are a couple of examples to inspire you.

Konono No 1

These virtuosos of Congolese thumb piano make an incredibly energetic sea of music with the sparest of resources. Check out the microphone carved out of wood in this picture:

Knit Robots

These sweet homemade robots give me a warm feeling like "Yes, I could create my own friend." These were featured as part of Make's new craft blog where you can find other great projects such as crocheting hyperbolic space and knit zombies.

Heart

Defective Yeti is just one of the blogs I read with smart, funny writers who have interesting perspectives on children and the world at large. For three days this week my husband asked me "Did you read Defective Yeti yet?" and I hadn't. Finally he sat me down and told me to read the most recent posting. It was about the recent discovery that their boy has "Autistic spectrum disorder" and the impact of this. The remarkable part is that even as he writes very personally he still manages to make it chock full of links to useful resources. They are the kind of parents we aspire to be- caring, thorough and balanced.

We know about the fear that grips you when something's wrong with your child. When Boyo was a month old the pediatrician heard a heart murmur. It turns out that he had patent ductus arteriosus , a condition where a duct that circulates fetal blood to the placenta doesn't close correctly after birth. Blood than recirculates between the lungs and the heart and the inefficient pumping causes the heart to work too hard.

After hoping that it would close on it's own he eventually had to have surgery to tie it off at three months. This was incredibly nervewracking but we felt very lucky that this would fix his condition, that it was a very routine operation for the surgeons (not open-heart surgery) and that we had health insurance.

Boyo is fine now but are constantly amazed by the new territory of parenthood. The nurse at the birth did tell me "This is not the most difficult thing you will do for your child."

Banish the Idealization of the Past

I'm subscribed to Rob Brezsny's email horoscopes and look forward to his nuggets of inspiration each week. Here is a passage that I find especially motivating:

ALMOST MORE GOOD LUCK THAN YOU CAN BEAR
"The rise of modernity served many extraordinary purposes: the rise of democracy; the banishing of slavery; the emergence of liberal feminism; the differentiation of art and science and morality; the widespread emergence of empirical sciences; an increase in average life span of almost three decades; the introduction of relativity and perspectivism in art and morals and science; the move from ethnocentric to world-centric morality; and the undoing of dominator social hierarchies."
—Ken Wilber, *A Brief History of Everything*

I find it very frustrating when people refer to times in the past as if they were an ideal time to live. In addition to all the advances listed above, life in the developed nations is just EASIER. It doesn't take a day to do the laundry and food preparation. We have a tremendous amount of leisure time. We are lucky. This isn't to say that there aren't serious inequality problems that we need to address or that we haven't given up a connection to nature. We now have time to be depressed rather that being forced to struggle on a day to day basis just to survive.

Once we start recognizing what we've done right we can start trying to spread those things to the rest of the world and start to fix what we've broken along the way.

'Silent Birth' Suggestion Makes Me Want to Scream

Yikes! I can't quite imagine this:

TRAVOLTA AND PRESTON SUGGEST A 'SILENT BIRTH' TO KATIE

Scientology couple JOHN TRAVOLTA and KELLY PRESTON are urging KATIE HOLMES to have a 'silent birth' when she delivers fiance TOM CRUISE's baby next year (06) and follow the church's strict doctrines.

Scientologists believe children should be brought into the world without any fuss and be allowed to quietly get used to their surroundings. That means no music, no chatting and no expressions of pain from the mother.

Preston explains, "It's just because everything in moments of pain is really recorded and you want to have that (the birth) peaceful and clear of sort of suggestions or different words that can then affect them (babies) in their future."

It's especially vexing to me given that vocal toning was incredibly helpful for pain relief. I thought it sounded new-agey and ineffective too- until I tried it. This whole attitude of telling someone how they SHOULD give birth is cruisazy. I mean, you don't really know what will work until you are in the midst of trying to get through one of the difficult experiences of your life. To try to hold yourself to some higher moral ground while you're doing it just adds more stress.

Defective Yeti is Brilliant

Via Defective Yeti

AIH

I went to go see Architecture in Helsinki last night. A great show. 8 people and a ton of instruments packed on the small 7th St Entry stage. Their website is supercool. It's all in Flash so I couldn't steal any pix to post here. We'll see how well I survive at work today after staying up til 1:30 am. So far it's worth it.