Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope

I've said this here before but I have (apparently) some new readers so I'll explain again. When Ryan gets in trouble, real trouble rather than just little trouble (lying vs getting home late for instance), she gets assigned papers. This happens roughly once a year but I anticipate it happening more often as the rebellious teen years show up. I try to make the paper topic match the crime, but sometimes it's hard. Lying to a teacher in 3rd grade got her a paper on Watergate, for instance. But for not getting her homework done, I drew a blank. So here is, in its entirety, her paper on a giant telescope. For what it's worth, I don't understand a word of it.

Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope

By Ryan Tillman

The Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope is a space observatory being used to perform gamma ray astronomy observations from low Earth orbit. This report will cover the objectives, stages, discoveries, equipment, and general information of this research mission.

The main objective of this mission is to study the black hole jets aimed directly at Earth to find out whether they are composed of a combination of electrons and positrons or only protons. More objectives are: study gamma ray bursts with an energy range several times stronger than ever before so scientists can understand them better; study younger, more energetic pulsars, or highly magnetized, rotating neutron stars that emit beams of electromagnetic radiation, in the Milky Way than ever before so as to broaden our understanding of stars; study the pulsed emissions of magnetospheres, or the magnetic fields around celestial bodies, so as to possibly solve how they are produced; study how pulsars generate winds of interstellar particles; provide new data to help improve upon existing theoretical models of our own galaxy; study whether ordinary galaxies are responsible for gamma ray background radiation. The potential for a huge discovery awaits if ordinary sources are determined to be irresponsible, in which case the cause may be anything from self-annihilating dark matter to entirely new chain reactions among interstellar particles that have yet to be conceived.

On March 4, 2008, the spacecraft arrived at the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Florida. On June 4, 2008, after many previous delays, it was determined that Fermi would launch around June 11, as the last delays resulted from the need to replace the Flight Termination System batteries. Fermi launched successfully on June 11, 2008, departing from pad B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Complex 17, and the spacecraft separated from its carrier rocket about 75 minutes afterward. Fermi currently resides in a low-Earth orbit at an altitude of 340 miles at an inclination of about 29 degrees.

The first major discovery came when the telescope discovered a pulsar in the CTA 1 supernova remnant that appeared to emit radiation in the gamma ray bands only, an unusual trait for its kind. This new pulsar sweeps the earth every 317 milliseconds at a distance of around 4,600 light years. Another important discovery came in September 2008, when the gamma ray burst GRB 080916C in the constellation Carina was recorded by the Fermi telescope. This burst is noted as having “The largest apparent energy release yet measured.” The explosion had the power of about 9,000 ordinary supernovae, and the relativistic jet of material ejected in the blast must have moved at a minimum of 99.9999% the speed of light. Overall, GRB 080916C had “the greatest total energy, the fastest motions, and the highest-energy initial emissions” ever seen.

Another round of discoveries came in 2010. In February 2010, it was announced that Fermi had determined that supernova remnants act as enormous accelerators for cosmic particles. This determination fulfills one of the stated objectives for this project. In March 2010, it was announced that active galactic nuclei are not responsible for most gamma ray background radiation. Though active galactic nuclei do produce some of the gamma ray radiation detected here on Earth, less than 30% originates from these sources. The search now is to locate the sources of the remaining 70% or so of all gamma rays detected. Possibilities include star forming galaxies, galactic mergers, and yet-to-be explained dark matter interactions. In November 2010, it was announced that two gamma ray and x-ray bubbles were detected around the Milky Way galaxy. The bubbles extend about 25,000 light years above and below the center of the galaxy. The galaxy's diffuse gamma ray fog hampered prior observations, but the discovery team worked around this problem.

Two important pieces of equipment are the Gamma ray Burst Monitor and the scintillators. The Gamma ray Burst Monitor detects sudden flares of gamma rays produced by gamma ray bursts and solar flares. The Gamma ray Burst Monitor results show that gamma rays and antimatter particles, or positrons, can be generated in powerful thunderstorms. The spacecraft's scintillators, or photon energy detectors, are on the sides of the spacecraft to view all of the sky which is not blocked by the earth. The design is optimal for good resolution in time and photon energy.

Another important piece of equipment is the Large Area Telescope, or LAT, which detects individual gamma rays using technology similar to that used in terrestrial particle accelerators. In the LAT, photons hit thin metal sheets, convert to electron-positron pairs, and pass through interleaved layers of silicon microstrip detectors, causing ionization, which produces tiny pulses of electric charge. Researchers can combine information from several layers of this tracker to determine the path of the particles. After passing through the tracker, particles enter the calorimeter, which consists of a stack of caesium iodide scintillator crystals, to measure the total energy of the particles. The LAT's field of view is large, consisting of about 20% of the sky. The resolution of its images is modest by astronomical standards, a few arc minutes for the highest-energy photons and about 3 degrees at 100 MeV. The LAT is a bigger, better successor to the EGRET instrument on NASA's Compton Gamma Ray Observatory satellite in the 1990s. Several countries produced the components of the LAT, sending the parts for assembly at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. The participating institutions were:

U.S. Team institutions

1. Stanford University, Physics Department, Fermi group & Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory
2. SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Particle Astrophysics group
3. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Astrophysics Science Division
4. U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, High Energy Space Environment (HESE) branch
5. Ohio State University, Physics Department
6. University of California, Santa Cruz, Physics Department and Institute for Particle Physics
7. Sonoma State University, Department of Physics and Astronomy
8. University of Washington
9. Texas A&M University-Kingsville

German team institution (in German, of course)

1. Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Theoretische Physik IV: Theoretische Weltraum- und Astrophysik

Japanese team institutions

1. Japan Fermi Collaboration
2. University of Tokyo
3. Tokyo Institute of Technology
4. Institute for Cosmic Ray Research
5. Institute for Space and Astronautical Science
6. Hiroshima University

Italian team institutions

1. Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN)
2. Italian Space Agency
3. Istituto di Fisica Cosmica, Milano, CNR
4. INFN and the Universities of: Bari, Padova, Perugia, Pisa, Rome Tor Vergata, Trieste, and Udine

French team institutions

1. Service d'Astrophysique, CEA DAPNIA, CEA Saclay
2. Centre National d'Études Spatiales
3. Institut National de Physique Nucléaire et de Physique des Particules, IN2P3
4. Laboratoire Leprince-Ringuet de l'École Polytechnique
5. Centre d'Études nucléaires de Bordeaux Gradignan
6. Laboratoire de Physique Théorique et Astroparticules, Montpellier

Swedish team institutions

1. Royal Institute of Technology
2. Stockholm University

Everything here, and a little bit more that won't fit on 3 pages, went into the building, maintaining, and fame of this marvelous spacecraft. I had to type a whole lot of French that I don't understand for that last part. Well, since I guess I'm doing the conclusion, I should do conclusiony stuff. This report listed the objectives, stages, discoveries, and equipment of this research mission. Bye!!!!!!!

Stop the extremism, and then off on a tangent.

I hate extremes. Which is odd, since I guess technically I should just strongly dislike extremes, hate being an extreme and all. I'll have to ponder that moderately someday. But anyway....

I am in favor of gun control. I don't want to ban them, but I'd like to think there's a way of keeping psychopaths from buying guns on a whim. I think people should be able to carry concealed weapons, with a permit.

I am opposed to abortion. But I am in favor of keeping it legal because as long as I can see some circumstance in which I might want to get one I feel I have no authority to say anyone else should never be able to get one. That said, I do not think abortion is a right, or merely something a woman chooses to do to her own body. There is, at the very least, a potential for life other than hers involved and that discredits, to me, the "It's my body" argument.

I am opposed to circumcision. Or should I say, to routine infant circumcision. I think it's pointless, needless, cosmetic, and not in a child's best interest at all. But I don't think it's mutilation, because I don't think a circumcised penis has been mutilated. I think a penis that went through a meat grinder would be mutilated, or an amputated penis, or a scarred up with a switchblade penis, but not a circumcised penis. However, I do think that certain forms of female genital mutilation are very much comparable to circumcision, like the ones where they just remove the labia as opposed to removing the clitoris and then sewing the whole thing up. And I think that as long as we say it is horrific and terrible and abusive for Africans to cut the labia off their young daughters so that the girls can a) look like their mothers, b) look more attractive and normal because in their culture all they ever see are vaginas without labia, and c) prevent the formation of smegma later in life, and then continue to circumcise our own sons for the exact same reasons, we are hypocrites and we are idiots for not even seeing it.

I think that when people go all extreme in their arguments the first (and often the only) thing they accomplish is to convince the other side that they are the only rational side there is. As long as the intactivists keep screaming about people mutilating their sons and ruining them, the pro-circumcision side will continue to think that we are all wackos who take this shit wayyy too seriously and that we are too unstable to pay attention to. Also, maybe we should stop ranting on about how much sexual pleasure there is in the foreskin and all that. People don't generally like to think about their infant sons getting off; it makes it harder to deal with the tiny erections that tend to pop up in smiling babies' diapers. When they say they don't want girls to laugh at an intact penis later on, they aren't imagining sex as much as they are imagining 2 people seeing each other naked, which is an important distinction for a mother. When we are tasked with all the bathing and diaper changing, we need to separate the organ from it's future function, or else we can't manhandle it the way we need to. (Baby boys poop all up around their junk, you need to move it around and really get under and around everything to wipe it clean. Laugh if you will, but desexualizing our children is a vital parental coping skill.

I prefer reality

My parents divorced. Nothing special or unique about that; divorce was the national past time in the 80s. What's odd is to be my age and have parents who aren't divorced. As a "child of divorce" (cue sad music) I absolutely abhor divorce. Some kids with divorced parents end up with the "my parents split up and I turned out okay" mindset but not me. I have the "my parents' split was traumatic and I never want to do that to my kids" mindset. Do I have deal breakers, things that would cause me to contemplate divorce? Of course I do; everybody does. But I have very few of them and they are extreme. And lack of romance or dead sparks are not on that list.

I detest romance, or rather the preposterous definition most people have. I'm a realist, myself. Romance fades, it dies, it is replaced by yeast infections and stinky bathrooms and baby puke and grown up puke. People who expect "true love" to be a never-ending smoke machine filling their lives with pink fog and giggling are delusional. I do not understand married couples who can't pee in front of each other. It makes as much sense to me as women who swear their husbands will never see them without make up. If your relationship is so fragile that one misplaced fart will bring it to the ground, your problems go beyond a man seeing you tinkle.

I have a friend who desperately wants a "real man", a cowboy, a George Strait video. Wanna know the secret behind George Strait videos? They're only 4 minutes long. Four minutes of the perfect man, whittled out of hours of footage. It takes months to make a romance movie, in large part because it takes 12 takes to get one perfect romance scene. And some women expect this shit to happen spontaneously and randomly in real life?!

I've had friends who have divorced because the spark died out, or the romance faded, or they "just became roommates". Guess what: that's supposed to happen. That's what you signed up for. Companionship, friendship, not 50 years of fireworks. And why would you even want fireworks the whole time? How much work must that be, to keep up the pretense of perfection? How much stuff must you go through alone because you can't share it with your husband? Sometimes bitching helps; I believe that firmly. To not be able to bitch about things would drive me nuts. "I hate my period, especially heavy days. I kind of wish I could just birth a placenta every month and have it done with." "Ohhhh, my tummy hurts. I will be so happy when I finally poop and the pain goes away." Or even just to ask for help! I need to be able to ask my husband for help sometimes. "While you're at the store could you pick me up some Super tampons?" "I need to borrow ten bucks for Monistat." "Honey I clogged the toilet! I need help!"

I know. I sound really gross here. But keep in mind that all of these examples are over the course of 6 years (so far) and 2 pregnancies. I cannot imagine going through all of that with the mindset that I had to hide every bacne outbreak or gassy night (where do these people sleep after a bad meal?).

But also remember that my husband has the same freedoms I do. He gets sick and doesn't hide it. He can talk about the wart on his hand or the fungus on his foot or the alien life form he coughed into the sink in the morning. He can send me to the pharmacy for embarrassing items (and he does, and I go) and describe potty things to discern if such things are normal or not. And I can still look at him and see my handsome, sexy, wonderful husband, even after hearing about butt pimples or whatever. Because I'm not infatuated, I'm in love. And I don't need a fireworks display to confirm it constantly. I am happy with the sunset. The sky is still lit up, but it's quiet now, and the colors are softer, and it's real. And I am so glad I don't have to always be on my best dating behavior. How exhausting to live an entire life together trying to make a good impression. If Tom can't handle being married to a real live 34 year old human now, how on Earth would I expect him to handle being married to a 50 year old human, or a 60 year old human? I'm gonna need him to drive me to my colonoscopies someday. If I ever get chemo, he's gonna be the one nursing me through the nausea and hair loss. If I can't be seen peeing now, am I going to move out later? Someday I will be changing this man's diapers. I signed up for that when I married him and I knew it then. And I still married him, because to me, it's not about romance. It's about love.

Poor little crazy stalker guy

I fear confrontation. I really do. I'm the friend who just stops answering the phone rather than get into a fight. I do man up and explain things when I break up with someone, but if you did something that pissed me off I'm more likely to stew by myself than blow up about it. That said, people need to stop shooting from passive straight to aggressive in this world.

A 41 year old man has been arrested for stalking a 20 year old girl. Nobody told him to stop sending flowers and chocolates and emails. He has, by his own account, spent a lot of money on these gifts to a girl he says he fell in love with from a distance. Now, of course he's crazy and I can see why the girl is scared but let's face it- if he were Richard Gere and she were Natalie Portman and this were a movie he'd be considered incredibly romantic and they'd end up together. But here's the big thing I have a problem with; nobody ever told him to stop. Nobody ever told this guy that she didn't want his gifts, or that he was scaring her, or that she felt harassed or threatened in any way. From April 2008 to December 2010, this guy has been sending flowers and candy to this girl and she has been doing absolutely nothing to stop him, and then she had him thrown in jail. Maybe the letters got threatening, I don't know. But why did she sit there and do nothing for over 2 years? She's a Kennedy; she could have had an assistant do it or something. There should be a law that says you cannot have someone arrested for a recurring crime unless you tell them to stop first.

Just to get it off my chest

Pneumonia is an effect, not a cause. It is the name for fluid in the lungs and can be caused by any number of bacteria, fungal infections, or viruses. You do not catch pneumonia; you catch whatever it is that gives you pneumonia. If your lungs are filling with fluid and you aren't inhaling it from outside your body, you have pneumonia. And a virus that gives one persona pneumonia might not affect other people the same way, so please stop saying your kid couldn't have made my kid sick because your kid had pneumonia and mine only had a cold. (And bronchitis with a wet cough is not walking pneumonia even though it makes you sound oh-so-brave to be dealing with it.)

The flu is a very specific virus strain. There is no such thing as a stomach flu and a really bad cold is not the flu. The flu will have you in bed with chills and feeling like you've been hit by a bus for a week. A sinus infection is not a mild flu. Diarrhea is not the flu. And there is no 24 hour flu. The flu can kill people; it's that serious. When people say "Oh I never get the flu shot anymore because one year I got it and then I had the flu like twice in one month," they are wrong. We seem to have this habit in the U.S. of calling every case of sniffles a cold and calling every bad cold the flu. The fact is, a bad cold will have you out of work for a few days and the flu will have you in bed for a few days. What most people call a cold is actually a sinus infection or some sort of upper respiratory bug. The reason the flu shot works is because it prevents the flu, the actual can-be-fatal-for-some-people flu. The reason the swine flu vaccine was doubly important was because it prevented swine flu, which was fatal for even healthy young people.

Being unable to run 2 miles without struggling for breath does not mean you have asthma. It means you are not a Terminator. Getting gassy when you eat eggs does not mean you are allergic to them. If eating an entire pineapple burns your tongue, you have a slightly heightened sensitivity to the acid in pineapple, an acid so strong it's used as a meat tenderizer, by the way. Food allergies, real food allergies, can kill people. Yes, it is possible to have mild allergies that cause discomfort or even affect moods, but cutting out gluten to be like Elizabeth Hasselbeck isn't even one of those. Why does this distinction matter? Because kids in lunch rooms are smearing peanut butter on allergic kids just to watch them freak out,not knowing that the freak-out could actually be death. I have what's called an upper G.I. sensitivity to certain drugs. If I take a certain antibiotic (not penicillin, oddly enough) at noon I will throw up at 1:00, 2:00, 3:00, etc for up to 12 hours. If I get a certain painkiller in my I.V., I will throw up all over the hospital room. I am not, however, allergic to these drugs. Because they make me puke; they don't kill me with my own body. I don't know if the people who just have to have asthma or allergies or some other disease just need to be a victim and be applauded for how their life is somehow harder or if they're just such pussies that they equate gas pain with anaphylactic shock.

Babies spit up. Some babies spit up more than others. This does not mean that a baby who spits up after every feeding needs prescription medication for esophageal reflux. It might mean (more likely) that the baby needs to burp more. We all worry about our babies, but we don't all pump them with prescription meds in the first months for it. If the baby appears healthy and happy and is gaining weight, it could be something as simple as being so eager to eat that they eat too much and spit up because an infant's stomach does not stretch. If you put 2 ounces of food into a stomach the size of a marble, the stomach will over flow, no matter what reflux meds you put into it first.

Babies, especially breast fed babies, can go days without pooping. It is not constipation to go a couple days between poops, even for adults who are digesting all sorts of varied foods with all sorts of differing fiber contents. When a baby starts solid foods, they often undergo a period of adjustment where they won't poop for a few days. This is normal. Exclusively breast fed babies, even in the absence of any new foods, will sometimes go up to a week without a dirty diaper. This is caused by a growth spurt and a sudden need to absorb more of the milk than usual, which leaves less to be passed as waste. Since breast milk has NO extras in it (no preservatives or flavorings or anti-caking agents like chemical food, I mean formula) it can be entirely absorbed and used by the body. This can cause a mother to worry, since poop is one of the few things she can actually see and understand. Babies don't speak so we can't tell exactly what's going on with them, but we can count and examine dirty diapers (have a kid, you'll know what I mean). Not pooping for 3 days is no reason to shove a suppository up your babies butt. For one thing, it's never good to shove something up a butt, but sometimes the good outweighs the bad. There is risk, however minimal, of tearing or infection or of disturbing the delicate balance of gut flora in the intestines. These risks can be worth it when a baby is actually constipated (pooping hard pellets that cause pain, experiencing abdominal cramping due to a slowly passing blockage, etc), but not just to get you back to the business of examining poop. Stop anally violating your baby because you have chosen an arbitrary timeline for your kid's colon.

Belief vs Opinion

Opinion: a subjective statement or thought about an issue or topic, and is the result of emotion or interpretation of facts.

Belief: Mental acceptance of a claim as truth

Opinion is how you rate something on some sort of scale. From good to bad, large to small, ugly to attractive. Belief is what you feel to be truth, with no scale; it's your perception of reality. "She's ugly," is an opinion based on a personal preference, and is no more or less valid than anyone else's opinion. It cannot be proved or disproved because it is subjective. "She's dead," is a belief, which may or may not be true and can be either proved or disproved with evidence. A theory is a belief that cannot yet be proved or disproved. "The sun has tiny firemen in it," is a theory. If it were possible to look inside the sun, one could prove or disprove the tiny firemen theory. My personal opinion is that it is a stupid theory.

The reason I bring this up is that many people are out in the world spouting complete untruths and then declaring them to be opinions. "Gay is a choice, Obama is Kenyan, The Earth is flat." And then when you try to correct them they say "That's just my opinion," because their opinions are so sacrosanct that you are not allowed to argue them. And that would be true, if they were stating opinions, but they are actually stating beliefs, or at the very least theories, and generally false ones at that. Obama has presented a mountain of evidence to prove that he was born in Hawaii. Some people choose to believe he wasn't, but that believe isn't an opinion.

Also, on a related note, while I may not be able to disprove an actual opinion, I can still disagree with it and react accordingly. You are very much entitled to believe that homosexuality is icky and bad and morally dangerous, but I am equally entitled to hate you for it. Opinions may be sacrosanct, but they do not come without opposition.

Just take my damn cans!

If the city plows are going to plow a 4 ft snow drift in front of my house, then the city garbage trucks can damn well pick up my trash when I balance it precariously on top of the government designed mountain like some Dr Suess illustration. Now I am left with an overflowing bin of recyclables the day after trash pick up because Princess Garbage Collector is too delicate to reach up for it. Of all the careers in which to feel entitled, this guy picked garbage collector? I bet he calls himself a sanitation specialist, too. Meanwhile, Mr Too Good To Reach For Trash, I have to drive my recycling bin across town for another trash pick-up.

Someone tell me the word for this.

You know what's on my mind? Premises which eliminate any answer but one. I'm sure there's a word for that (and if there is, I want to know it so tell me in the comments section) but I don't know it so now I'll go on ad nauseum with examples.

Why is it that women seem to get either no plastic surgery/botox/liposuction at all, or all of it until they look horrible? You never seem to see the actress who gets one procedure when she's 40 and then looks well rested and fresh, and then quits while she's ahead. They all end up looking like Joan Rivers! I know why; because they're people who got that one procedure when they were 40. Women are made to stand close to the mirror. We see the one blackhead in an otherwise perfect complexion, the wrinkle forming between the eyebrows, and we fixate on it. It's probably because we had to zero in on the bad spot in the food before our family ate it or something, back in the caveman days, but now it just makes hot chicks think they're fat and ugly. And if a woman is the sort to see plastic surgery as an option, she will use it for everything. And then you end up with a plastic woman who doesn't look 30 years younger and just looks fake. But the skin that did sag now doesn't, and the blotch that was there isn't, and each piece that had to be fixed is, and she never steps far enough back from the mirror to see the big ugly picture. But the women who accept crows' feet and eyelid droop as okay don't go for the botox in the first place. The type who would quit while they were ahead never started in the first place.

Why do studies always show that second marriages have higher divorce rates than first marriages? Because the very question eliminates from the mix the sorts of people who don't divorce. Sure, some of the second marriages could be widows and widowers, but it's generally divorcees. And divorcees have seen that they can survive a divorce and go on to find love again. And just like everything else, it becomes easier each time. The world didn't end when my first marriage failed so it won't end when my second one does either. The people who refuse to file for divorce are less likely to find themselves in second marriages so they don't make the second marriage statistics.

So hungry he could eat a pressed-flat horse

I love that my son ate a "pony" for dinner tonight because he can't say panini and has deemed it unworthy of the effort it would take to learn how. He likes them, he eats them, but he cannot be bothered to learn how to pronounce them. He has things he needs to do!

stop bein stoopid, dumazzez

I hate wen I read fb posts an dey r spelt lyk dis. Makes me wanna scream 2 hav 2 read out loud jus 2 unerstan wat dey r sayin.

(I hate when I read facebook posts and they are spelled like this. Makes me want to scream to have to read out loud just to understand what they are saying.) And I think I finally have figured out why.

I read 1984 in 1994, during my senior year in high school. I'm sure I have forgotten some very important and symbol-laden parts. I remember that the guy's job was to re-write things in New-speak so as to help further the goal of shrinking the language so as to shrink thought. And also that the cigarettes all seemed to fall apart. But basically, the language thing. The theory (which I believe works to an extent) is that if people can't put their thoughts and vague concepts into words, they will eventually be unable to harbor those thoughts and vague concepts. If your only negative word is "bad", you can't really be incensed, or aggravated, or revolted, or disgusted. You can only think something is bad.

I think that the dumbing down of American youth's language, the text speak and the shrinking and condensing of thoughts into facebook status and twitter sized blips, is dumbing down America's youth. I think that when we eliminate detail and nuance in order to get entire conversations down to 140 characters, we lose our ability to appreciate detail and nuance. I believe that when we cannot spell responsibility or intelligence that we just don't use the words, and slowly the concepts evaporate as well. Not today, but check on it in a few generations. Will responsibility be the next fortnight? Will it be an antiquated term most teens can't define?

When we tolerate rampant misspellings (And why text speak now anyway? Everyone has a qwerty keyboard on their phone now!) and abbreviations, we tolerate ignorance. And when we tolerate something, we accept it and grow accustomed to it and it becomes a viable option. I don't want my daughter to grow up thinking that the incorrect is just as good as the correct, that dotter is a viable way to spell daughter, that she can learn to spell it tomarrow or tomorrow. I want her to know that intelligence is good, is better than ignorance, and that willful ignorance is the worst.

I am a herd

I am paranoid. If I pass a group of insipid teenagers at the mall and they start to giggle (which insipid teenagers always do) my first thought it that they are, of course, laughing at me. Paranoid, see? Once in high school I came out of the girls room and walked down to class, and people were laughing and I (as always) immediately thought they were all laughing at me, but I knew the odds of that were almost nil so I told myself to just hold my head up and ignore them and to stop being so paranoid. I'd walked most of the way down the hall before somebody yelled at me to pull my skirt out of the back of my underpants. True story. True, and humiliating, story.

My point, other than to always check the back of your underpants before leaving the ladies room, is that I will never assume the best. I write this blog and I know that no one reads it. No one comments here much so I assume no one reads it. Now I have been hearing that people do read it. So yay. But with that yay comes fear. What if what I write pisses people off? What if someone sees themself here? What if they're not even the one I was writing about? I can't just say "Oh no, the bitch I mentioned with the IQ of a wet noodle was Sue over there" so I'll just be stuck with a lame "It wasn't you, for realz."

So to my readers, who now number in the high single digits, thank you for reading and try to remember that my blog is like a herd of vapid teens at the mall. It's probably not laughing at you and if it is, it's really too stupid for its opinion to matter anyway!

Best blog post ever, just sayin. And yours all suck, no offense.

Remember about ten years ago when you could say anything horrible and insulting as long as you said "no offense" too? Yeah, that was fun. No wait, it was horrible! A bunch of self-important assholes running around spouting off any old opinion they wanted with no concern for other people's feelings and following it up with "no offense" to show that it was just a simple observation and therefor you were being over-sensitive if you did take offense. "Hey you're getting really really fat, no offense." "No offense but your mom is a giant bitch." Thank God that fad passed. Except it's back.

"Just sayin" is the new "no offense" and I hate it! I have a friend who does that all the time and it drives me nuts. She does it as a way, intentional or not, of shutting down conversation and ensuring that she has the last word. And if I try to respond anyway, she cuts in with "Hey, I'm just sayin!" It doesn't help that we are on opposite sides of the political spectrum and often debate things anyway, but the "just sayin" fad in general bothers me (I see it a lot on facebook) and this is just a quick example of it that springs to mind right now. But it will be something like this, in regards to the Navy commander who made sexually charged homophobic videos "Well if you're going to punish him for morality then what about Bill Clinton sticking cigars in people under him in the Oval Office? Just sayin." Now, I see a difference there. I see that the Navy Commander did these things publicly, showed the videos to everyone else on the ship, and insulted and denigrated an entire populace, while Bill Clinton cheated on his wife privately and then got caught. I see one as a workplace issue and the other as a private moral issue (since no one ever complained that his relationship with Monica was less than consensual or that he was harassing her). But when I tried to say this she said, "Hey, I'm just sayin."

Just sayin is the new no offense. It's a way of saying argumentative things and then shutting down the response. "Starbucks is evil and so are people who go there. Just sayin." :I hate all Will Ferrell movies. Just sayin." Or, "Will Ferrell is the greatest actor of all time. Just sayin." Anyone who disagrees has basically just been told not to bother trying to get into a discourse because hey, it's just an opinion. And as we all know, in America, every person's opinion on everything is valid and sacrosanct and not to be argued with at all. And also, that there is no difference between belief and opinion, that the words are synonymous. But that's a rant for another blog post. Probably soon.

My take on why so many Americans spoil their kids

I've read articles about this topic and I've agreed with a lot of what some of them say, but here's my take on it.

My grandmother's generation, raised in the Depression, had nothing. They were often hungry, wore old and oft-repaired clothing, and swore never to do that to their own kids. So the next generation, the baby boomers, were given everything they needed. They got new clothes and lots of food whenever they wanted (I think the invention of the snack, let alone specific snack foods, came at about this time), and luxuries like TV and record players.

Then the baby boomers had kids, my generation. And not only did they give us everything their parents gave them, but we also had cable and central air conditioning and other newly invented luxuries. Plus, divorce became popular in the 70s and 80s and our parents were busy having careers and getting divorced and remarried and doing all the dating in between. And they made up for their absence and preoccupation with gifts. Two families can mean two Christmases, and Mom working late or going out on a Friday night can mean pizza or fast food. So we got spoiled, and fat, as a generation. And now we have kids, and we add our own twist.

My generation, the people I know anyway, seem to fall into 2 main categories. The ones who see divorce as an inevitability (I once heard a woman in her 20s refer to a passing stranger as "my fourth husband", and those who swear never to do it themselves. Oddly enough, the ones who divorce most often tend to come from parents who never did. But the ones who are determined never to divorce often remember how parental divorce affected them or their friends growing up. They remember feelings of neglect and unimportance and don't want to do that to their children. And they remember parents who weren't home. I know more stay at home parents my age than I remember seeing when I was a kid. Our mothers were dating and flirting and finding us step-dads and we want to be there for our kids. And now you have , in addition to the cable TV and central air conditioning, cell phones and laptops. But also helicopter parents. Parents who remember what it felt like when they were bullied and Mom didn't care, so they will storm into the school and fight for their child over the smallest things. Parents who rush their kids to the doctor over any fever or rash or nausea. Parents who practically have Purell pumped into their house via water pipes. (I don't remember my mother ever sanitizing my toys in bleach growing up but now people talk about doing that all the time, and the moms I know who do it seem to be the ones complaining of sick kids the most. Causation or correlation?)

Somehow in the last 3 generations, we've gone from telling our kids to always dress nicely and be polite and respect your elders no matter who they are, to everyone only worrying about their own family and resenting any implication that there might be a greater good out there worth worrying about. It manifests in little ways all the time. A parent who refuses to vaccinate their kid because they think there are too many shots contributes to the diminishing of herd immunity. Germaphobe parents teach their kids specifically not to share. Kids are taught to mind their own business and later, witnesses to public crimes never come forward. There is less of a sense of responsibility to society than there used to be. There is also a growing sense of narcissism. An obese parent feeding their child high-fat high-sugar foods will say "I grew up on this stuff and I'm okay" and honestly believe it. A circumcised father, rather than looking at his perfect baby boy with pride, will demand an unnecessary surgery so that the boy's penis will look like his (which is, of course, the most glorious penis ever to exist). A mother who grew up with an absent and selfish mother will also devote her time to her own social and love lives and claim that, "If you don't take care of yourself, you can't take care of your children." The idea of parental sacrifice is either taken to extremes (Ever met that mother/martyr who refuses to let her husband help her with anything?) or ignored altogether under the guise of not becoming a martyr. Our mothers fought for the right to be mothers and career women, to have it all. And now a lot of women have to fight just to get it all done, and the children get spoiled, either by being given too much stuff or too much time. If your kid grows up learning that every slight, real or imagined, is worth Mom marching to the school to fight over, or that every sniffle is worth a trip to the doctor's office, they develop a sense of entitlement. They should never feel less than 100% and a doctor needs to fix it now. The school can't do anything less than beneficial for them and the policy and/or curriculum needs to be changed now. This translates later to the fry cook who demands more respect at work even though he has the lowliest and least respected job in the place. He's not going to work his way up to a job that gets more respect; he's just going to demand more respect and a cost of living raise where he is. I once heard a fry cook, after two weeks on the job, complain when he got fired for excessive absences: "I thought this was supposed to be a company that cared about its employees and here they are firing me for being sick."

Our kids (collectively as a generation) and we, to a similar extent, are spoiled and fat and I think the two are very closely related. Our grandparents ate turnips and could make one chicken last 3 meals. I'm not suggesting we return to that, but daily cookies and soda, and portions as large as our plates are completely unnecessary. As is demanding respect and concessions from everybody at every turn. I heard a great quote once. It said "You are special and unique, just like everyone else."

I need to be plural again

Four years ago I wanted a baby, in a bad way. Ryan was only 8 and she knew to pull me out of the baby section of Walmart by my arm when I started saying, "Ohhh, I want one." Now, 2 babies later, I have a whole new, yet similar, fever.

I want to be pregnant. Maybe it's knowing that I probably never will be again, but I feel really really sad when I see maternity clothes that I would have loved to have had before, or a pregnant woman absent-mindedly rubbing her belly, or even just remember some little detail from pregnancy. Like my discovery of deep fried pickles when I was pregnant with Tommy, or Applebees hot wings when I was pregnant with Danny. I miss feeling kicks, and resting my hands on the top of my belly, and I miss being okay with my figure. I know it's odd, but I only really like how I look when I'm in my last trimester. It's the only time when I feel like I have an excuse not to have a flat belly, when I look the way I want to look at that point. I love tight maternity clothes. Not skimpy ones, just tight ones. And it's the only time I'll wear a bikini. And now I face a life of not being happy with my figure. Even if I managed to lose enough weight and tighten up my abs, I have a very soft and squishy crepe-paper belly that doesn't look right unless it's filled out with an extra person. This isn't why I want to be pregnant, but it is a contributing factor. I'm not even sure I want another baby, at least not that I want one as bad as I just want to make one. If it weren't for my traitorous pancreas, I'd be a surrogate.

Old people piss me off

When I was a kid you could tell who the old people on the road were. They drove what we liked to call boats. Big 1970s Impalas, or Cadillacs. Four door cars with trunks longer than their vinyl-covered roofs. You knew they were old and you drove accordingly. Now they drive everything. I once saw a blue-hair in a PT Cruiser with flame graphics. It's like the baby boomers are getting old and they can't accept that so they run out and buy new cars. Just. To. Fuck. With. Us. How about this, Elderly Woodstock Survivor, how about you deny your aging by getting lasik surgery so you can see the road and then driving the actual speed limit instead of ten miles under it? It's got to work at least as well as buying a2 door Intrepid and using it to block traffic.

Thursday

Thursday is the worst day of the week, and I can explain why.

Monday sucks but everyone knows it's coming, that there has to be a start to the work week in order to ever get paid, and that it's not really Monday's fault. On three day weekends, we just end up hating Tuesday instead.

Tuesday is good because hey, at least it's not Monday. We're a little closer to the weekend, even if just by one day.

Wednesday is kinda neutral. It's the middle of the week and kind of stands alone just on that distinction. Plus, a lot of bars have Hump Day promotions, so that's kinda cool.

Thursday isn't Friday, but it's just close enough that all day you can't help but think of Friday, and that today is not it. Also, if for any reason your mind feels one day off, there's a 50/50 chance that you will be horribly disappointed when you realize your mistake.

Friday is awesome because it's the last day before the weekend. It is almost universally accepted that Friday is a slacker day and that everyone's mind is already on the weekend head of them and that, if they can get away with it, people will be ducking out of work early. Never schedule surgery for a Friday.

Saturday is the only day of the week when you can sleep in and stay up late. Unless you're religious and you have to wake up early, which is a waste of the gift of God's weekend and should be considered a violation of Sabbath rules if you ask me.

Sunday is good, if you stay home. Otherwise you have all the church people clogging up the streets with on-street parking all around the churches, church people with tie-wearing little kinds being all antsy in restaurants at lunch time, and Sunday-only drivers on fixed incomes who refuse to drive over 20 mph in order to save gas.

The Bed

Adorable Tommy stories

Today Tom watching TV and Danny was in the bouncy seat in front of the TV and Tommy came up to me with a tissue covered in some sort of gelatinous goo. He handed it to me (ugh!) and when I thanked him he said, "Baby drink spilled." He had wiped Danny's chin after he spit up. He's so sweet.

The other day Tommy took Danny from me and carried him (I walk along with him all hunched over, hands under Danny's butt while Tommy carries him in a hug with his arms under Danny's armpits because it seems safer than playing tug of war) into his room where he laid him down on the floor on his back, laid down next to him, and then "flew" his dragons overhead to make Danny laugh.

Danny got a stuffed cat for Christmas. Our cat absolutely loves this toy. Tommy has gotten scratched and bitten more than once taking it away from the cat to give to Danny. (I think it must smell like milk from the baby's drool because otherwise I can't see why the cat loves it so much.)

Every day at lunch Tommy goes to Ryan's bedroom door and knocks and calls her to lunch. He knows she's gone; I don't know why he does it unless he thinks she's just holed up in her room all day every day, but just in case, he wants to let her know when lunch is ready.

When Tom was building Tommy's new bed for Christmas, he spent a lot of time in the basement working on it. We could hear the power tools and Tom moving lumber around through the vents and Tommy would stand at the vents and yell "Marco" into them until he heard his dad yell "Polo" back. He never got mad that his dad was in the basement for hours, as long as he could play Marco Polo with him through the furnace register.

It's just kinda crappy

I am increasingly disturbed by this "Every man for himself" mentality I see pervading America. For one thing, it seems like absolutely no one can ever say anything to anyone else because the other person is assumed to "know best". New mothers with absolutely no experience or education about babies or child care are told not to worry because "it's your baby and you know best." It is a scientific medical fact that breast milk is superior to formula, and doctors tell women who choose formula that they know what's best for their babies.

Same with choosing not to vaccinate. Call me naive, but wouldn't doctors, with their supposed superior knowledge of anatomy, nutrition, and health know better than some woman with nothing but gestation on her list of accomplishments? And the fact is that not vaccinating a child hurts other children, too. Not every immunization takes hold. Some kids who have gotten the measles shot can still catch measles later. But if every kid is immunized against measles, then the disease doesn't have enough targets to spread to and dies out. It's called herd immunity and it's what eradicated polio. But with the anti-vaccine crowd comes a resurgence of diseases like measles. And some kids whose parents did vaccinate can get sick. Now, it used to be that you could explain this to people and they'd care. Their sense of social responsibility would kick in and they'd not want to be the one who took down half of Timmy's fifth grade class with pertussis. But now they don't care. Other people's kids aren't their problem. Every man for himself.

Twenty years ago, if a parent felt that the school system was inadequate, they went to the principal about it, or the school board, and made a reasoned argument as to why the class needed new textbooks or that the teacher might need to rethink their approach. But now, to Hell with all the other kids in the class, we're home schooling! Don't worry about improving things for other kids, let their parents do it if they want to. Every man for himself.

In the fifties, the "golden age" that all the big conservative pundits like to ramble on about returning to (before gay people and black people and poor people, when apparently everyone was a white WWII veteran and even the TV sets saw life in stark black and white), no one let their neighbor die for lack of health care. If Mrs Jones had cancer and there was a treatment for it that she couldn't afford, schools held bake sales and churches took up collections and neighbors pitched in. If you could afford to help, you did. And if you couldn't afford to help, you helped in another way. But you did not argue that the woman needed no help because your family had good insurance and you had worked hard for your money and it was downright socialist for anyone to expect you to help or even care. But now . . . it's unfortunate that Mrs Jones is sick and you really hope things turn around for her but she should have gone to college and gotten a job with better insurance, but it's not your fault that she didn't and you have your own family to worry about. Every man for himself.

Waaaaaaay to the left

I'm a liberal. But I'm not sitting around wondering what people can do for me. Shocking, I know. I believe in suing bad doctors for lots of money to give them a reason to not be bad doctors, not for torte reform. I'm for letting gay people get married, cuz it's none of my business and doesn't affect my life if they do. And I'm for helping people when they need help cuz what kind of country just lets people die around it and then shrugs and says "Not my problem."?

But I am not socialist. And part of that is scientific. I think that the US is a grand experiment in democracy, and you cannot change an experiment halfway through. You let it succeed or fail on its own, and if capitalism and democracy fail, then so be it. But, I also believe we can have an EPA and a DOT without becoming socialists. Especially when the hospital charges me ten dollars for a Vicodin because uninsured parents bring their kids to the ER with lung infections a regular pediatrician could have cured, if not for the $45 office visit charge. So I am a liberal, and I really wish people would stop trying to convince me not to be. In rather unpolite terms, I think non-liberals tend to be selfish fucks.

Respond in comments. Prove me wrong. I will admit it if you do.

I am NOT ready for this

My daughter has a crush. I think. Maybe she doesn't but I think she does, and she's too private to confirm or deny, so we'll go with my assumption. So for the purposes of this article, she has a crush. And he's not good enough for her!

But will anybody ever really be good enough for her? Will anybody be smart enough and motivated enough and mature enough and responsible enough? And for right now, she's twelve! If the perfect guy came along and wanted to date her, wouldn't the fact that a mature and responsible and smart and motivated guy wants a twelve year old scare me on its own? But this guy is nice. And not bad looking (when I squint and pretend I'm twelve, and remember my own crush on his father when I was that age), and that should be enough to impress a twelve year old girl, right? So, should I take her dad's advice and hate the guy for being good enough to impress a twelve year old, or should I be happy that my "weird kid" daughter has a bit of developmental normalcy, and has a crush? Maybe. I think.

Duggars. Funny, funny, Duggars

Is anyone surprised that these people:

a) have 19 kids,

b) vote Republican,

c) identify as Christian, and

d) "train" their kids in how to use guns?

My son, Hellboy.

He put kitty litter in the fish tank. Pee-y kitty litter. It's clumping litter and he just picked up a couple clumps and plopped them into the tank. I have no doubt the fish will die soon. Then he laughed! And he tried to give the baby's hand to the cat. He tried to feed his brother to the cat!
You know in the movie when the lady finally realizes that her adopted son/neighbor/nephew/babysitting client is the devil, and no one else realizes it but her and they all think she's crazy when she tells them he's the devil? I am at that point right now.

Salvia

Salvia is safe. Or at least, studies have shown that it is. And no studies have shown that it isn't. At it apparently makes people feel just fabulous. It made it a little easier, for a while, for Miley Cyrus to be Miley Cyrus, and that's gotta just suck without drugs. So why are states rushing to ban it? I'll tell you why, because people want life to suck. The puritans who run this country don't want people to feel giggly and high, even if it's a harmless high. They ban everything just for causing euphoric feelings. You can get aspirin-codeine pills otc in Canada, but not here. You can get pot in the Netherlands. You can't even buy a Sudafed without ID here because some kid mixed it with transmission fluid to get high. I'm not pro-pot, or pro-transmission fluid or anything, but sometimes we need to escape. If that's a beer, or an ambien-induced conversation with my fish tank (not all that bright, but it just goes on and on and never shuts up), then it's not the government's business. And if smoking mint's cousin is safe and happiness-bringing, then it's probably the least offensive of anything Miley Cyrus has done on video, or is likely to do on video anytime soon.

Just for a week

I know people who budget their tithing like I budget food, as an unavoidable indispensable expense. There are people who sometimes struggle with bills, who don't buy their kids a lot of fancy new toys, and who don't drive brand new cars with low insurance deductibles. These are ordinary people who think that giving to the church is the same as giving to charity, who believe that putting money in a collection plate will better the world. And maybe it does, but like with any charity, the middle man takes his cut.

Tithings pay for the parsonage, and they pay the pastor so he can do things like feed his family and not have to take a full time job in addition to his church duties. Tithings are a good thing in that they keep the church up and running, and the extra goes to charities and that's good. But imagine if, just for one week and maybe not all on the same week, everyone who gave at least $10 to their local church instead gave the money to save children from Malaria. How many deaths could be avoided, and really, how many churches would go bankrupt? My guess is that the pastors would still get paid, and the churches would still stay open, and all the bills would still get paid, and a LOT of insecticide-treated mosquito nets would get handed out. And isn't that precisely what Jesus would want people to do? To save actual human lives and put off replacing the hymnals?

my goals, and they be lofty goals, too!

I don't make New Year's Resolutions. I think, as a concept, they're damned from the start. If losing weight or quitting smoking is something you're so eager to do, you wouldn't have put off starting until New Year's. Picking an arbitrary date sometime in the future for a goal you decide is important in December (or earlier) is a sure sign that you're not really psyched about doing it, and soon whatever motivation comes with January first will fade away to the same uninspiring level you had when you first thought the thing up.

So I make goals. This year, I would like to lose weight, same as last year (after I gave birth, of course). I plan to continue to deny myself excessively large American portions of food, to keep trying to eat mostly plants, and hopefully to exercise, which I find exceedingly difficult to make myself do unless it's warm enough for a walk with the stroller.

I also would like to find a way to motivate Tom without nagging. The thing is, it's easy to nag less; you just stop doing it. But then stuff never gets done, deadlines pass, and all of a sudden it's my fault because I didn't remind him. So, I need to find the magical motivation in the land of unicorns and flying monkeys that will get Tom to do things he has promised to do, and knows he should do, yet needs to be nagged to do.

I want to take my kids to have their pictures taken, professionally. Ryan gets school pictures taken, but we rely on camera phones and digital cameras for the boys. I want to take the boys down to JCPenney's like I used to do with Ryan. I'd also like to get at least one good picture of all 3 of my kids together. And as long as I'm dreaming of a world without sitting fees, a new family picture would kick ass too.

I would like to get my blender cabinet. I have been nagging Tom (because there is no other way, dammit!) for months to build me a blender cabinet. Obviously, Tommy's big boy bed took priority, but now that it's done, I would like my cabinet. I have a very specific idea of what I want, but it is not what I will get. Tom will find a way to make it "better", with no idea of why I wanted it a specific height or width or whatever, and I will forever lament what could have been. But I have a waffle iron, panini press, food processor, food chopper, George Forman grill, and a coffee grinder and no place to put them. (Ironically I don't want to put the blender in the blender cabinet because it is red and looks nice on the counter.) I also have many plants that need to be on top of a blender cabinet in front of the window but which would, in its absence, merely fall to the floor and be eaten by the cat.

all the cool kids are doing it

Me: Why did you buy a tarp?

Tom: To put over the air conditioner.

Me: Does it require that?

Tom: I don't know but everyone else does it so I want to, too.

Me: Seriously?

Tom: (as he walks out the door with his new tarp) Yep.

I am too old to eat crackers in bed.

Yesterday, while at Walmart with my family I was feeling pretty good about myself. For one thing, I was wearing jeans I hadn't been able to fit into ever before (bought them one size too small 2 years ago and lost the tags so I couldn't return them), but also because I am proud of my family and like to be out with them. Ryan had just bought herself a bird with snow-shoveling money and was off buying bird supplies for little Fibonacci (yes, she is that awesome of a nerd), and Tom and I were both pushing carts with boys in them. When it came time to check out, we went through the line in our usual fashion: Tom in front with Tommy and the groceries, re-bagging everything after the cashier because Tom is very anal about what things go in which bag in which order, then me with Danny in my cart and large items underneath, then Ryan as a separate customer buying her own stuff. A woman walked by, obviously dressed for New Year's revelry. Black skinny jeans in stiletto books, long black coat, curled and highlighted hair, make up, and probably a size 4 at the most. "I wish I looked like that sometimes," I said. "You and me both," Tom said.

Suddenly fitting into a size 10 didn't feel as hot as it had before. Suddenly I felt every wrinkle and gray hair and stretch mark I have. Suddenly I felt as though maybe my age wasn't an accomplishment so much as an embarrassment. Suddenly I wondered if I might not be one of those women who wake up one day in stained sweats (check), with 6 inch gray roots (check), a life full of mundane chores (check), their only source of pride their own ability to pretreat and remove stains (check), with a husband who's run off with a newer and shinier version of herself. Is divorce the only box of middle-aged cliche I haven't checked? Am I doomed to check that box?

Someone is married to Doris Roberts. Someone was married to Jessica Tandy. Susan Sarandon is single. Courtney Cox is separated. Eva Longoria and Sandra Bullock have been cheated on. So it would seem that growing old gracefully, naturally, without screaming and kicking and running off to be dyed and botoxed, would make one into the sort of timeless beauty and source of stability a man would want to spend their life with. But maybe not, because somewhere in Clinton, Ia right now is a hungover woman who wears stiletto boots and size 4 skinny jeans, and my husband "wouldn't kick her out of bed for eating crackers."

So tonight we're gonna party like we just turned 99!

Happy New Year! Remember back when we were kids, before Pentium was a thing and we were all still laughing at Bill Clinton's promise of some magical future "information superhighway"? Back when plain white paper was called "typing paper" and printer paper came in long continuous reams with holes on the side? When we would do the math to figure out how old we'd be on New Year's 2000? Yeah, the fact that we remember that makes us old. So, Happy Arthritic New Year!