Category: Family Members

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中文 Homework (Showing Off)

Okay, I’m going to show off a bit.

My Mandarin homework at the Chelmsford Chinese Language School this week was to write a paragraph about Naomi. Most of this we have covered in class, but I got some help from my friend Shenghan to make sure the grammar was correct, and still managed to make one mistake in with the suì character, which I have since corrected.

我

有

一

个

女

å„¿

。

她

叫

娜

奥

ç±³

。

她

五

岁

了

。

她

é•¿

着

黑

黑

çš„

头

发

。

她

喜

欢

è·³

舞

。

娜

奥

ç±³

是

一

个

亮

é—ª

é—ª

çš„

女

å­©

。

Here is the same text with the pinyin inserted:

wÇ’

yÇ’u

yī

gè

nÇš

ér

tā

jiào

我

有

一

个

女

å„¿

。

她

叫

Nà

ào

mǐ

tā

wÇ”

suì

le

娜

奥

ç±³

。

她

五

岁

了

。

tā

zhÇŽng

zhe

hēi

hēi

de

tóu

fà

她

é•¿

着

黑

黑

çš„

头

发

。

tā

xǐ

huàn

tiào

wÇ”

Nà

ào

mǐ

她

喜

欢

è·³

舞

。

娜

奥

ç±³

shì

yī

gè

liàng 

shÇŽn 

shÇŽn 

de

nÇš

hái

是

一

个

亮

é—ª

é—ª

çš„

女

å­©

。

Mandarin makes learning Spanish seem very easy by comparison. There are no Chinese-English cognates, and just learning the different tones is daunting. The “pinyin” phonetic aids help, but I still struggle with pronunciation, and, ultimately, need to memorize all the charcters. (Growing up in China, my teacher learned each character by being required to write it 1,000 times.) Of course, I occasionally have my rudimentary Chinese good-naturedly laughed at, such as a few weeks ago when I said, 我的太太不好。 My wife is no good, rather than 我的太太不舒服。My wife is not feeling well!

I’ll post a translation in the comments in a few days. In the meantime, you might have fun figuring it out. (Hint www.chinese-tools.com offers some excellent tools for working with Chinese, including a dictionary and input method editor.)

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Naomi’s Improv Ballet

NaNi (now age 5), loves to dance. After her ballet class, while another group was rehearsing for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” she improvised this.

Toward the end you can see her looking into the studio room to see what the older students are doing in their rehearsal.

Naomi studies Ballet at Gate City Ballet, in Nashua, N.H.

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Just the Facts

The other day I was talking to someone who said he had heard on the radio that the US Federal government was going to give free digital television converts to welfare recipients, and that they were spending $100,000 each on plasma TVs in prisons. This came from what was described as “the most trustworthy radio news source in the area.”

Frankly, I couldn’t believe it. There was a coupon program to buy converters at a discount, but the program used up all its money, and had been discontinued. (Recently, it has been given more money by the federal bailout, and is operating again.) However, these coupons are available to anyone who desires them, so it’s hardly being targeted to those receiving government assistance.

But I wondered what the origin of these stories had been, so I hit the internet.

It turned out that millions of households on welfare might be given free digital television converters—in Japan sometime before their digital switchover in 2011. The prison story was a little closer to what’s real—the state of Florida’s department of corrections is spending $100,000 total, approximately $1 per inmate, out of its $2.3 billion dollar budget to convert existing television to digital.

Our opinions are often based on incorrect facts. Part of this is described in basic psychology—it’s called confirmation bias—how we filter evidence that strengthens our preconceptions.

But also our incorrect knowledge of history, various sciences, and current events allows us to hold on to incorrect opinions.

This is especially true in “popular knowledge”—think about all those e-mail forwards you receive that 15 seconds at about.com or Snopes could easily refute. Think about all the people who believe wearing a magnet on their wrist will make them healthy. Or all the “Christians” who espouse the heresy of the Prosperity Gospel and can even quote Scripture out of context to support it. Or that rubber tires protect vehicle occupants from lighting strikes. Or that a metal vehicle acts as a Faraday cage. (It doesn’t.)

At any rate, I have been thinking much of late that we should all do more analysis before we speak.

I wish we could all just be smarter.

I wish I could just be smarter.

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Nichelle: The Return of the Twins

[Note: I am keeping this updated via the comments. You will want to read them for the latest status.]

For just over a week now, the symptoms Nichelle has not experienced in years (for more than very brief periods of time) have been plaguing her again. These include sharp pains in various parts of her body, strange sensations in her head, abnormal exhaustion, and odd sensations of temperature. When these strike, it becomes impossible for her to lead the active life she has enjoyed for the past few years. At times the pain has even been bad enough for her to dig into our hoarded Vicodin supply. We call these pains “The Twins: Pain and Agony.”

For example, today she awoke in apparently perfect condition, and was able to get in a full Tao-Bo workout and her strength training. However, by mid-afternoon, her head began feeling foggy, and the pains had begun. On Sunday, she again began the morning fine, but by the end of our church service, did not trust herself to drive home.

A return of these dreaded symptoms was not something we anticipated. Nichelle has had the additional struggle of facing the possibility that this is back to stay for some unknown length of time.

Although we are certain that these have a hormonal component, we believed that a vitamin D deficiency was the cause of these difficulties. Nichelle has been on a high dose of vitamin D for the past few years, which appears to have kept the symptoms at bay. Nichelle had blood drawn on Saturday, and has an appointment to go over the results tomorrow morning. If it is a problem with vitamin D, it should be easy to correct. If that isn’t the problem, we would be back at the inexplicable and difficult state we were in a few years ago.

Clearly this is God’s path for us, and we will endeavor to learn from it and glorify Him, but please pray that Nichelle will be back to normal soon.

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President Obama’s Big Day: Off to a Good Start

After being up until 1:00 a.m., our new President attended a prayer service at the Washington National Cathedral.

He issued several executive orders, including:

  • A freeze on salaries for White House staff earning $100,000 or more.
  • New Freedom of Information Act rules, making it harder to keep the workings of government secret. (And requiring a third-party ruling before declaring communication or meetings secret.)
  • Saying, “The way to make government responsible is to hold it accountable,” he ordered new ethics rules for “a clean break from business as usual”—tighter ethics rules governing when administration officials can work on issues on which they previously lobbied governmental agencies, and banning them from lobbying his administration after leaving government service.

He also drafted an executive order calling for closing the Guantanamo Bay prison facility within a year, got things rolling on the economic stimulus package, and spoke with a number of Middle East leaders.

Despite what I would have predicted, I think I am going to like this guy.

(See http://www.cfrb.com/news/56/861993 and http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/01/21/pm_first_day_q/ .)

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Fun with Atheism

One of the things I’ve been able to do this year is teach robotics, using the Lego MindStorms NXT system, at the Academy for Science and Design chartered public school, in Merrimack, New Hampshire. I volunteer two mornings a week, and teach two different student groups, numbering about 10 each. Until December, the program focused on FIRST LEGO League, in which we were competing. Since then we have taken up building robots for an intramural robot Sumo competition.

A few weeks ago, we mentioned a requirement of ethical behavior in class. One of the kids pondered, “Why should I care about ethics?”

“Because God requires it,” I replied. (Just because I’m working in a public school, there is no reason to pretend I’m not a Christ-follower. I don’t beat them over the head with it—indeed, it hardly ever comes up—but it is the foundation for my moral beliefs, including why we need to behave in an ethical manner.)

“But I’m an atheist,” claimed the student, “so that doesn’t apply to me.”

“Well, then,” I suggested, “The FLL program requires it; your school requires it; and this class requires it. Will that suffice?”

A few moments later I asked the student, “So, you’re an atheist? Really?”

“Yes.”

“Honest to God?”

“Ye—waaaaaaaaiiiiiiiit a minute.”

We’re still laughing about it.

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Doug’s Health: Hoping Humira Works

People often ask about how my health has been.

My rheumatologist and the one I saw at Brigham & Women’s Hospital agree that I have symmetric psoriatic arthritis, finally answering the question of psoriatic versus poststreptococcal reactive arthritis, although it must be pointed out that this is not a definitive diagnosis, but rather a differential one based on the presence of psoriatic skin lesions and the lack of reactivity to methotrexate alone.

I haven’t written much because, frankly, there hasn’t been much to say. While continuing treatment with methotrexate, the inflammation which has made it painful to move in certain ways (and at time nearly impossible) has stayed almost the same for months; the psoriasis—apparently the start of the whole mess—has actually gotten worse. After several months when the arthritis symptoms were quite severe, most of the duration of this has been more mildly debilitating.

I’m now able to move well enough to use our elliptical machine at home nearly every day. I was only really “down” about this illness once, when I realized there was no way I could participate in a planned outing to The Strategy Zone that I’d been anticipating for nearly a year. (I actually cried about that one.) It is very hard to lose weight (although I’ve taken off 4 pounds since Thanksgiving), even with Nichelle monitoring and prescribing my diet. It hurts to do things like put on and take off shoes, and exercises like Tao-Bo and running are out of the question. Until this became bad in early June, I was running about two miles every day—something I had worked since the previous November to be able to do. I’ve been able to help compensate for the psoriasis by spending the drive to work and back brushing my hair, which helps keep me—mostly—from looking like a Head and Shoulders commercial. (Finding a brush that was stiff enough was amusingly difficult.)

To be honest, it was much harder to see Nichelle suffering all that time under her vitamin D deficiency and being unable to do anything to truly help her. Being the “sick one” is sometimes very mildly discouraging, and somewhat painful, but it hasn’t been that bad. I also have much more sympathy to those with movement disabilities or rheumatoid arthritis.

Yesterday I took my first dose of Humira, a band name form of adalimumab, which is a tumor necrosis factor-alpha inhibitor. TNF is part of the inflammatory process, and inhibiting it reduces inflammation.

However, in addition to some other potential side effects, Humira is an immunosupressant, and can leave one open to infections and other illnesses. (For this reason I had to be very carefully screened for tuberculosis.) It also has to be injected, although only twice a month, and it’s only subcutaneous, and nearly painless. (I’ve had blood draws that hurt more.) It’s also very expensive—I believe about $20,000 per year—but insurance covers that, and the manufacturer even pays my co-payments.

On the bright side, in 4–8 weeks, I might start to see some reduction of symptoms, although the full treatment often lasts a year.

Thanks to all of you who are praying, and for all your kindnesses along the way.

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NaNi and Nichelle in The Nutcracker


Naomi in her angel costume and makeup from Gate City Ballet's Nutcracker.

Both NaNi and Nichelle were in a production of “The Nutcracker,” put on yesterday by Gate City Ballet. NaNi got the part of an angel, and Nichelle was one of the dancers at the party in the beginning.

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The performance was originally scheduled for last Friday and Saturday, but had to be postponed because of the ice storm. Another snowstorm arrived on Friday, so two performances were set up on Saturday.


Nichelle, onstage, during the party scene.

I’d actually never seen “The Nutcracker,” although, like most, I was familiar with the music. I was very impressed with both the overall quality of the production for a relatively small ballet company, and the skills of the dancers, especially the children. Later I learned that GCB is quite well known in this area for doing such excellent productions.


Nichelle at the end of her scene.

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FIRST LEGO League: We Won!

Since the school year began, I’ve been teaching Lego Robotics two morning’s a week at Isaac’s new school, the Academy for Science and Design Chartered Public School, in Merrimack New Hampshire.

Many of you know I’ve been teaching Lego Robotics twice a week at the Academy for Science and Design, in Merrimack, N.H. As a function of the class, we had two teams competing in the FIRST LEGO League branch of the FIRST Robotics program, founded by Dean Kaman. (See http://www.usfirst.org/community/fll/ .) The ASD is a chartered public school, now in its second year of operation.

At the “MindStorms Madness” qualifying tournament in Merrimack, N.H., on Saturday, the two teams from the ASD came away with three trophies:

The team I officially coach, Robotic Revolution, won first place in the Technical category (Robot design and programming), and will go on to compete at the state competition on December 6 at Nashua South High School.

The other team I taught (but did not officially coach) won 2nd place in Technical, and got the top score during the seeding matches. (Sadly, they were eliminated in the finals.)

The photos from the slide show above are available here on PicasaWeb.

I’ll update this post with more details about the team and the event sometime in the next day or two.

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The Geek Is Strong in Her


Actually, that’s my propeller beanie.

Growing up in our household, it isn’t likely that Naomi would be able to escape the culture of Geekdom that pervades it. Still, she has proven herself to be independently minded in a number of ways. For example, she has developed, without our influence, her own belief in Santa Claus, which none of the boys did. (We chose not to foist the Santa myth on the children, but she’s picked it up on her own, from television and other media, and adheres stubbornly to his existence.) She is crazy about ballet and girl clothes, and can even dance beautifully while using a hula hoop, both activities being entirely self-taught.

Still, she plays World of WarCraft (we joke that she has a level 5 Piercing Shriek) and Halo, loves Star Wars, Lego, and “Dr. Who” (although we had to cut back on the last one, as it was giving her nightmares), and reads MegaTokyo. So, here are a few of the more interesting ways she makes us smile, as we rub our hands together and laugh maniacally:

When I saw them go on sale at ThinkGeek, Nichelle insisted that I buy a Flux Capacitor replica. So, one Sunday, when I was bringing the Flux Capacitor to church to show off (we have a Geeky church), Naomi exclaimed, “Dad! We forgot to bring a second lot of plutonium!” Then, she ordered, “Mom! Get it up to 88 miles per hour!” and started chanting, “Do it! Do it! Do it!” (Back to the Future has always one of Naomi’s favorite films. It’s also where she learned to swear … and then of course not to swear.)

The other day she casually remarked, “The Mach 5 rules; the Mach 6 drools.” (Yes, we are Speed Racer fans as well.)

A few weeks ago, we went out for go-carts and putt-putt golf, and in the lot was a small, shed-like (TARDIS-like) building with double-doors on the front. NaNi called out, “Look, Dad, a time travel machine!”

And she likes science as well, including begging to go places like the Museum of Science. We were talking about the moon, and I asked her, “Where does the moon gets its light?” She responded, “From the sun.” I was thrilled, impressed that she understood reflectivity as it applies to moonlight at four years of age. Then she said, “Yeah, the sun turns into the moon at night.” We’ll keep trying …


NaNi mocks Isaac in the time-honored manner: “Look, I’m Isaac … Duuuuuuh.”