Daddy, Papa and Me

More research has come out showing the link between sleep apnea and heart disease.

Fixing my sleep apnea last year hasn't solved _all_ my problems. I'm still an unfocused, easily distracted, frenetic minded person. But, I'm a damn alert one! Every once in a while I catch myself remembering what it was like 'pre-dawn' (I tell you again and again, that is what it was like, a dawning), or feeling completely surprised that I don't fall asleep at my desk even after only getting 6 hours of sleep (used to do it at 8-9 hours of sleep every day).

So, that was the short-term benefit.

I'm also fascinated by longevity studies (not that I want to live _forever_, just a long healthy time).

My family has a history of heart disease. I wish I caught the sleep apnea early, but dang glad it was fixed when it was. As a doctor friend said "It probably added 7 years to your life" (not sure where he got "7" from).

Now.. maybe.. I'll fix the exercise and weight thing.

We just got hit by a 4.2 tremor.

That's makes for about a half-dozen 3.5-4.5 earthquakes in as many months. Epicenters all clustered about 10-20 miles east of here.

This time I was lying in bed reading Emma her good night story and and it knocked me off the edge (it's a small bed ;). Shocked us both.

Emma said, "what was that?" I told her it was an earthquake and her reply was "Do it again!" LOL... had to explain to her that I had power, just no THAT much.

Hope this is relieving pressure on that fault and not a buildup to the big one (there is no statistical basis for that though :).

FEMA reported before 9/11 that the three most likely disasters the U.S. faced was a) a terrorist attack in New York City (check), b) a major hurricane strike on New Orleans (check) and a major earthquake in San Francisco...

Yikes, 2 for 3, and the federal government has been 0 for 2 in preparedness.

Well, our earthquake kit is intact.. just got to strap down the big furniture now.

So supper tonight? Grilled salmon w/ tomato & onion, sauted swiss chard w/pinenuts. Recipe to follow.

So, NewsBucket has tested to see who uses the '7 words' (you know, the naughty words you can't use on TV) more often, the left blogs or the right blogs and found that the left blogs use profanity 18 times more . But there is a glaring methodological error. He took the top 10 blogs of each side and did a search on terms. DailyKos found 146,000 instances of those profanities for example. But that is what made me realize _immediately_ that he made a huge mistake in this 'comparison.' ...

Ann Coulter use the word "faggot" when referring to John Edwards. That would be bad enough I guess, but we expect that from her. It was the reaction in the crowd that really gets me. Cheering and whooping at the American Conservatives Union (the video is in the link). And some wonder why it's difficult to tell a spoof apart from the real thing at Conservapedia. Talk about profanity (That link is the other post I made to day, a comparison of left and right blogs and profanity... the comparer made a mistake). AndrewSullivan has more on this. He's right. I voted for Ronald Reagan and admittedly over the years have become more liberal, but this is just another indication to me that what it means to be "conservative" to day has moved away from me too.

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We are in a very prolonged adoption process. Can't tell you much about it because, well, there isn't much to tell yet. I will when there is and I can.

But Emma is apparently getting frustrated.

Yesterday she told Guy that there was a family that couldn't take care of their son and daughter and they are going to 'give them to us'. Apparently this is a boy and girl, both 6 years old and named Brandon and Leah.

And Emma said she has talked to them.

I am in that moment when I've got 3 entries half-finished, so I'll tell you a quick story from Saturday...

We were at the San Francisco's DCYF (Department of Children, Youth and and their Families) Summer Resources Fair (more in another post)...

Mayor Gavin Newsom was there. I noticed him as I was walking down an aisle of display booths (of summer programs, day camps, etc) and saw him walking with an 8-year-old (or so). The child asked a question that I didn't hear, but I heard this as Newsom walked by with the kid:

"I used to drink too much wine. I've stopped drinking that now. Completely stopped"

This is the last time her name will be said on this blog, but I had to link to some interesting commentary about the whole thing.

Coulter "defended" herself on Hannity (where else?). Andrew Sullivan has an excellent retort to this strange and lifeless defense. I would only add to this that what if the word she used was the "N" against a white person (her defense was that it's a schoolyard taunt against a heterosexual.. no big deal). Wouldn't she think the outrage would be as strong (if not stronger)? I remember that word being used as a taunt when I was a kid, doesn't make it any more acceptable. What she did (and how it was applauded by the audience) was unacceptable and stains the movement. It suggests to GLBT people that the conservative movement is all it is feared to be. I'm glad a lot of conservatives are seeing that and condemning her words.

Oh, and, don't think the 'liberal' side is off the hook. They aren't. Some liberal bloggers have been calling Coulter a tranny or transvestite as if it is and should be a epithet. Shame on them. At least is is low-level b/c/d-list bloggers and not a best-selling author and spokeswoman... but doesn't make it any better.

Later tonight and tomorrow I have a pile of posts coming, including a one (in a general, non-specific way) about suicide.

Family Pride has a new campaign using Kevin Bacon's Six Degrees charity site which is kind of a 'social networking' site for charitable giving (Kevin Bacon decided to make use of the 6-degrees of Kevin Bacon game). They have something going right now that the top six donation getters (not in total amounts but in the number of givers!) will get a 10,000 matching donation from Kevin Bacon.

Family Pride is shooting for 1,138 donations and one of the top spots (it's number 3 at the moment). Why 1,138? That's the number of federal rights, obligations and privileges that GLBT members don't get because they can't get married.

So, to help them, I've added their button to my site for till the campaign is over. They are a GREAT organization and have done a lot for our families. No exaggeration. So, please help them, even a buck adds to the number of donors and gets them to their goal and that extra 10k... and help our families get that much closer to equality.

Here is an impassioned support for Barack Obama from BlackProf.com. After criticizing a few African-American leaders for their too-easy support (or lack of scrutinizing) of a lot of leaders and culturual icons, and their too-easy attacks on Obama, she gives an impassioned answer to whether Obama is "black" enough: YES. I have to say, I agree with her... quote in the continued, because it says it better than I can. (photo is Obama and his wife)

A Guide to Field Identification"

That's my vote for the oddest book title of the year. What's yours? (poll and other nominees are at bottom right column of that link). Last year's winner was "People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It," by Gary Leon Hill.

The temperature right now, in our general neighborhood of San Francisco, is nearly 85' (the graphic is from near us, not _our_ neighborhood). Yowsa. It feels it! Summer is here, at least today. I say our neighborhood because San Francisco has notorious 'microclimates.' ...

As if I needed one.

This scientist believes that that an ingredient in cocoa, epicatechin, has so many benefits for fighting 3-4 out of the 5 biggest killers (heart disease, cancer, stroke and diabetes) that it should be considered an essential vitamin.

Who am I to disagree? I will dutifully start drinking 6 cups of cocoa a day. That's the number of cups the Kuna people in Panama drink that keep them so healthy, or so found a researcher at Harvard (of course the article has a 'business' slant to it.. can you imagine how much money nutrition companies can make if there is another vitamin added we need?!)

Epicatechin is also found in teas, wine, chocolate and some fruit and vegetables. Hey, no complaints here!!

Luckily we live in San Chococisco and Napa Valley (wine, fruits and vegetables year round) is an hour away.

Terrance wrote recently about writing his memoirs. I wrote a comment in response to him. The comment with some links is in the continuation, about why I keep a journal and am writing a personal history. Something today gave me an idea though.

As part of a class project (Patrick is putting together an excellent 'class photo/year book' for a school auction), each child is to supply a piece of artwork, a family photo and an "interview." So Guy asked her some questions this morning like what is her favorite color ("Purple, blue, red, pink and all the colors of the rainbow") or what does she want to be when she grows up ("A lot of things, a race car driver girl, a pilot girl, an ice cream girl..." Well.. they all do have 'girl' in common) and some others (I'll have to post some later, they were all interesting.

But that gave me an idea. Every year around her birthday (in three weeks!!!) we should ask her the same set of questions and record them (Guy suggested video, I think both video and writing them down). What a fun record that would be for us and her!

So not only my memoir.. but I think we'll start helping her write hers ;-).

Of course the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said that homosexuality is immoral and immorality has no place in the military.

I believe homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts. I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way. As an individual, I would not want [acceptance of gay behavior] to be our policy, just like I would not want it to be our policy that if we were to find out that so-and-so was sleeping with somebody else's wife, that we would just look the other way, which we do not. We prosecute that kind of immoral behavior."

There are some interesting aspects to this whole brohaha...

Well, lets see. Tonight for supper we are having potato, leek and asparagus gratin (because we've been getting all three in our vegetable box from the farm these last couple weeks). Recipe after the talk...

I have some _horrendous_ memories from my past. Watching a soulmate die, the last month of my grandmother's cancer delirium, abject poverty (not mine, seeing someone else in it), and more. Would I want to get rid of those memories? Selectively? Well, scientists have been able to do that in rats. Smacks of science fiction stories I've read. The answer to that question though is no, even if we could. They definitely have affected my life, those memories, and still do to some extent, but I like who I am and where I'm going. And even for all the pain they caused and cause, I'd be afraid that changing something so much a part of what I am would be too scary. Nothing to really be afraid of though really, it's a long way from deleted a general rat memory to deleting the memory of a tragedy long ago in a human.

So, more science below.. scary and not scary (unless you are Scottish ;).

Well, U.S. winter temperatures were average this year. Temperatures this winter in San Francisco though have been a bit warm to say the least. But local variations don't mean much in the entire scheme of climate change.

But...

Worldwide this winter's temperature was the _HIGHEST EVER_ since reporting started in 1880.

There is even a caveat to the US average as the graphic here might suggest if you look closely. More in the continuation...

I kind of harp on this occasionally, but really. If you or someone you know is a) near/over 40, b) overweight, c) snores loudly and often, or d) seemingly stops breathing while sleeping, get thee to a sleep clinic.

New research is confirming, on a basic level of physiological mechanism, that sufferers of sleep apnea show "silent brain infaction lesions" which precede the occurrence of stroke.

This on top of strong evidence of a link to heart disease, well... time to do something about if if you haven't.

Because there is good news:

Spam.. such a pain. I've noticed a couple comments that were legitimate have gone to junk and I rescued them (sorry James and Bacchus!), but who knows how many of you have commented and they never saw the light of day (I didn't check my junk enough). Even my own comments went to junk. And yet some obvious junk made it through. So, I did two things: made the automatic checking a bit less restrictive to let the real comments go through easier, but added a 'challenge' that has to be handtyped at the end of the comment (it's my name you need to type) to stop automatic ones. So spammers will now have to hand type their spam (which means I win the war :), but I'm sure they'll figure a way around this, but for now lets see how it works.

I'm not using those terms any longer.

Reasons below.

Supper today? I have no idea. Anyone know what to do with about 20 beets that isn't beet soup or beet salad? They just keep piling up (they are in season and our farm just keeps piling them on us)

So, short links to. First, according to this article, openly gay bosses are just better to work with. Not all openly gay men make good bosses, but apparently of the bosses out there, there are more good gay ones than good straight ones. Of course the article doesn't show any scientific proof, but it was interesting.

Just wanted to point out that Jason at Positive Liberty has written about something that is more often than not on my mind, being a biologist who deals with genomics every day: our future in "eugenics".

He gets right to the problem:

Yet if the choice is made voluntarily, by enough individual parents, I have a hard time finding a political justification to intervene. I’m on uncertain ground here, and the explanatory models that work so well in so many other areas of life really seem creaky and prone to breakdown when it’s a question of engineering one’s own progeny, and when the effects in one spontaneous order — the market — seem perhaps to wreck another — the genome.

I am pessimistic when it comes to this future, for gay people and many others in our diverse pool, though maybe not as pessimistic as Jason.

Came across a pile of totally unrelated but interesting (for me) links today. Supper today, Fetticini with pesto.. but the real kicker is "Balsamic and Brown Sugar Beets". It's part of my 'get rid of the 20++ beets I have' campaign which will also include a Chocolate Beet cake and some pickled beets as suggested by Melissa. Recipes to follow.

First link, this Daily Show satire on the 'ex-gay therapy' movement. Be forwarned, it is irreverent and a bit risque at times. But hilariously funny:

So much in the continuation...

Rhea made a comment in yesterday's post that there is a small house movement in this country. Got my always-overactive curiosity, enabled by this thing we called the internet, into full gear.

There is indeed a small-house movement in the US. The Small House Society is just one manifestation of that. Interesting, QueerCents had an article about the Small House Movement just a little over a month ago. Interesting thing about the article is a mention of the size of homes goes in cycles.

This is Emma hamming it up at our trip to Ano Nuevo State Park Monday. It was also the first time Emma had full reign and use of the digital camera. She took 142 photos. I've uploaded about 30 of them. They aren't even all the best ones. She's not bad for a near 5-year old! Take a gander at Emma's photos of Ano Nuevo Trip. A little more about the trip...

The Episcopal Church opens up to gay and lesbian members with full fellowship and elects a gay bishop. Several congregations split off and join the Nigerians and the Anglican church issues a stern pronouncement and demand to the Episcopals to "state explicitly by September 30th that it will bar the blessing of same-sex unions and stop consecrating openly gay bishops." The Episcopalian response?

Sweden, after 13 years of having civil unions, is poised to start allowing marriage for gay and lesbian couples. They will be joining 5 countries (Belgium, Netherlands, South Africa, Canada and Spain) and one U.S. state (Massachusetts).

That means countries that represent 161 million people in the world (or about 2.7% of the world population) now allow full equality for their gay and lesbian citizens (breakdown in the continuation).

So, in yesterday's post I discussed microhouses and talked about some of the small houses we have lived in. This topic is interesting to me, living simpler, smaller. Not that very good at it, but it does interest me as at least one way to make a dent in my life as well as the world around us. As I said, living smaller saves money, saves energy, saves time (in cleaning, etc), and if you do it right, makes life better.

To that end, Europeans seem to have it down in design. The picture here is of Emma's crib when she was an infant, but it was more than that.

After putting the populations of nations that have marriage equality in yesterday's entry about Sweden, I began to wonder, what would that look like over time... how has GLBT equality progressed? And as we plan to travel (and worry about making sure we have all the paperwork we need with us to prove our family's reality) to Turkey, Germany and the UK this summer in our first trip overseas since we came home from Germany in 2002, I began to wonder: where are our families equal... and safe. The plot above is the answer. More in the continuation.

Lets see:

Saturday (Daddy was on a trip Saturday)

I took Emma to her soccer game where she made 3 goals (and ran off the field to hug me giggling every time).
--Then it was off to the garden shop (or as Emma calls it "the bug store") to buy our spring lady bugs. We do it every year, it's becoming a tradition.
--Then we went to get my mop cut off (hair was getting unruly). She enjoyed sitting there watching me get all that hair cut off.
--Then she and I went to lunch at the diner next door where she played with the plastic bugs we got at the "bug store" (the real lady bugs were still in the car :).

So, according to this article , on Saturday I spent just about the total number of hours Saturday in "child care" that the average father does in a week. I'll have more to say about that article tomorrow (and Terrance's post about it).

This music video from this YouTube musician gave me a bit of a pick up this morning.

I've been thinking a lot about truth, existence and faith lately. You can chalk it up to mid-life and skip this entry if stream-of-consciousness 'reflection' isn't your cup of tea :).

I am a man of faith and a man of science.

We get the "she's always smiling" or "she is always so happy" all the time. At the auction the other night it was "your chronically happy daughter." Makes it sound like an affliction :).

I don't believe we had much to do with it. Her personality, like all of ours, is relatively hard-wired. I don't think any amount of parenting will change that much. I guess it's a little like gardening. A dahlia will be a dahlia, a cactus a cactus, no matter what you do. As a gardener your goal is to let that dahlia thrive so it can be the best dahlia possible.

It might be a bit of a simplistic analogy, but basically she's a happy child. She'd be happy no matter what, it's her personality. We just try to let that happiness thrive.

If you go to the official LDS (Mormon) web site, and search for the term "homosexuality" in the official church magazines (I doubt Dialogue and Sunstone are there :), along with some of the same illogical and worn-out arguments you read from Fundamentalists, you'll find this article from 1974:

Homosexuals and lesbians seldom are happy people. Theirs is a relationship that is unnatural, one not bound by fidelity, trust, or loyalty, and one totally lacking in the meaningful family relationships that marriage offers. Homosexuality often espouses emotional problems because of the constant insecurity inherent in a relationship neither sanctioned by nor protected by the law.

Because there is no legal bond, homosexuality too often encourages, or at least permits, promiscuity.

Ya think?

Conservative anti-marriage equality writer David Blankenhorn rightfully dismisses Kurtz's absurdly bad "gay marriage destroyed Scandanavian marriage' argument as well.. absurdly bad and hurting the anti-marriage equality movement.

Since the the "gay marriage destroyed Scandanavian marriage" argument has been thoroughly debunked, he has to grasp at another straw to hold to his position that gay marriage is bad. Dale Carpenter, a libertarian writer at the Volkh Conspiracy then easily destroys that straw.

The state legislature there rejected an amendment that would have started the process to amend the state constitution to ban marriage equality: 233 to 124. Next week it will start voting on approving civil unions. New England will soon be a monolithic area of shades of marriage equality.

I've talked a little about the public school system and choosing schools here in San Francisco. Well, we got our assignment: McKinley Elementary.

Moroccan Chicken and Fennel! (because I've got too many fennel bulbs in our CSA box this week :).

In celebration of today's dinner, here's a news item about fennel from the San Francisco Chronicle, from just last week. Fennel apparently grows very very well in Northern California.

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