Newsweek’s article on the “creativity crisis” has been making the rounds lately. It fits the usual template of such stories: extrapolation of a trend leads to prognostications of vague gloom. In this case, it’s that US kids’ Creativity Quotient scores have been falling since the 1990s.

The article is talking about a specific flavor of creativity, namely the ability to generate a lot of ideas, pick out and combine the most promising ones, and then follow through on them. The article contrasts problem-solving-based education that can foster this kind of thinking with US schools’ focus on rote memorization and test taking, and does a good job of citing research into creativity.

The article is less persuasive when it trots out the usual bogeymen of TV and videogames. The best videogames, and games in general, give you a set of rules and invite you to then solve the problems creatively, the kind of creative problem-solving that the article calls for in schools. And as fanfic and other transformative works show, people will watch TV and incorporate their stories into their own. The article approvingly notes that creative kids often make their own alternate worlds to play in. Can you get the same benefit from in part populating your alternate worlds with elements borrowed from TV shows? After all, most kids at that age are synthesists, creating those worlds from pieces of whatever stories they’ve heard, whether those stories came from books or TV or their family.

Programs exist to foster creative problem-solving, including Dr. Torrance’s Future Problem Solving Program. I’ll be interested to see if Eli and Liza’s schools offer such programs. But at least for now, I’m not that worried about them.

Here’s Liza eating her birthday cake at the giant locals kid birthday party we had a few weekends ago.

Here’s Eli pretending to be a robot in the box of one of Liza’s birthday presents. A pirate, my little pony robot.

And lastly, here are the two monsters I finished last night. They are going to my nephews when they visit in a couple of weeks.

We’re off for 4th of July celebrations, even if it is the 2nd. Here’s the song “4th of July” from U2 to get you in the holiday mood, assuming your holiday mood is fueled by trance-y instrumental pieces.

I finally got my photos from our trip uploaded! If you want to see some of Kat and Sean’s photos click here.

Given my enjoyment of older styles of videogames, is it any wonder that I’m charmed by Twilight redone as an 8-bit JRPG?

I’m not sure why this is as entertaining as it is, but hey! That’s the internet!


[stephen@sargent ~]$ uptime
8:58:08 up 10 Isner-Mahuts, 06:10, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00


For those of you wanting to actually make the change to uptime.c, note that, instead of


updays = uptime / 86400;
uphours = (uptime - (updays * 86400)) / 3600;
upmins = (uptime - (updays * 86400) - (uphours * 3600)) / 60;


use something like


upims = uptime / 39900;
uphours = (uptime - (upims * 39900)) / 3600;
upmins = (uptime - (upims * 39900) - (uphours * 3600)) / 60;


(Note: it’s a tennis joke. And a Unix joke. I can only imagine the size of the overlap in that Venn diagram.)

My brother Andrew wrote a tribute about our dad for Father’s day.

A father’s tough love is a cultural cliché – walk down the Hallmark aisle in May, and you’ll be assaulted by pink and white frilliness that proclaims a mother’s tenderness while the next month, the same aisle is festooned in blue and brown straight lines that let us know that dad, by contrast, doesn’t appreciate that nonsense. But that tough guy formulation masks some of the greatest truths about love that we learn from our fathers.

The whole thing is good, and rings true to my experiences. One of the greatest gifts I’ve been given is my parents, and to this day I’m scrambling as hard as I can to be as good a parent as they were.

This is without a doubt my favorite thing I’ve crocheted so far. I worked on him while in the UK, so I think he is sufficiently British. Blessed even.

The cuddly Doctor is going to Alana over the Fourth of July weekend and I will be so sad to see him go. I think I’ll start another one for myself…while I’m watching Doctor Who.

Many thanks go to Nyss at Pixelated Mushroom for the lovely free pattern and lots of coaching while I was completing the coat!

I got a wake up call right after the first of the year.

I went to the doctor for a sinus infection and my blood pressure was high. So high in fact, that my nurse practitioner was afraid I would have a stroke. She ripped open a sample box of BP meds and stood and watched while I took the first one. That doctor visit was the first day of my current life.

I had been toying with giving something up for Lent. I had never done a Lenten practice before, so I decided to combine that with something my body needed very badly. I gave up dessert sugar, sugared drinks and fast food.

The first week was bad. Withdrawal craving kind of bad. Several times I would wake up and crave sugar so badly I thought I’d cave and get something. But I didn’t. I made it through that first week and moved on to the second. Each week was easier until at this point, I don’t even think about sugar much. I do have it now but it’s a once or twice a week thing, instead of everyday, twice a day.

I started exercising. Every day. Not when I wanted to or felt like it. I did it everyday.

I lost 20 pounds so quickly if felt like magic.

I bought some new clothes to take on our trip to England.

Shortly before we left on our trip, I hurt my knee. I don’t know what I did to it but it was so very painful. I took a bit of rest the few days before we left and missed my trip goal weight by 1 pound. I was a bit sad but I consoled myself with the fact that I would still be getting plenty of exercise on the trip.

My knee was the singular down note on our whole trip. I had to baby it pretty much every day and the day we were in Edinburgh I didn’t climb Holyrood to see Authur’s Seat because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to walk at all the next day.

When we got home I had my chiropractor adjust it and since then it has steadily gotten better but I haven’t been exercising everyday. After the trip, I took the whole week off from working out. I’ve slowly been adding the daily workouts back to my schedule but I’ve been really careful about it.

Yesterday I went to the store nab a pair of shorts because I gave away all the ones that were too big. I picked up a pair that were the size I bought just before our trip. They were too big. I thought maybe it was a mis-size, so I got another pair. They were too big as well. I tried on the smaller size and they fit! Sometime in the past month, even though I haven’t lost any more weight, I lost a pants size.

I am not too proud to admit that I did a little dance of glee in the dressing room while wearing smaller pants.

In a lifetime of always, ALWAYS, buying the next size up, I bought the size smaller yesterday.

I wanted to come home and start my marathon training. Seriously, it crossed my mind to take up running.

So how’s my blood pressure? It’s better. I’m still taking meds but it is lower than when I started at the first of the year. The second half is that even though I’ve massively overhauled my diet and I’ve taken up exercise, I still had to start taking cholesterol meds. I’m not sure that this is a function of my weight at this point. I think I might be fighting age and genetics. And I’m getting to the point of being ok with that.

It’s hard to be mad at taking my medicine while I’m wearing smaller pants.