The verdict is in on Intelligent Design

I just read about this over on the Bad Astronomy Blog. There has been a trial going on in Dover, Pennsylvania on whether Intelligent Design should be taught in science class along with the theory of evolution. I’ve ranted on this topic before a few times frequently regularly.

Here’s the story. In 2004, the Dover Area School District amended its science curriculum with the following statement: “Students will be made aware of gaps/problems in Darwin’s Theory and of other theories of evolution including, but not limited to, intelligent design.” Later that year, a group of 11 parents filed a suit alleging that the school board’s policy was a violation of the US First Amendment. (Facts quoted from the National Centre for Science Education web site.)

The verdict, which came in today, found that ID is not a science and therefore has no place being taught in a science classroom. The judge’s conclusion states, in part:

In making this determination, we have addressed the seminal question of whether ID is science. We have concluded that it is not, and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.

(…)

To be sure, Darwin’s theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions.

Score one for the good guys. Don’t rest easy, though. According to the trial FAQs posted by NCSE, “since the beginning of 2004, 14 states (AL, AR, FL, GA, KS, MN, MO, MS, MT, NY, OK, PA, SC, and TX) have introduced legislation that would advance antievolution efforts.” Even the president himself has said he doesn’t have a problem with ID being taught as science.

There are yet miles to go before we sleep…

Ten-pages-in book review: Blood Memory

By special request for James, who happened to ask the other day if I had any forthcoming 10-pages-in book reviews just about the time I was thinking of writing one.

I come by my love of reading honestly – one of my dominant memories from childhood is of my mother curled up around a good book. I used to read a lot of what she left lying around, which explains why I was reading Stephen King by age 10 (which, in turn, probably explains why I am to this day afraid of the dark. But I digress.) I invoke my mother here because she is still my ‘dealer’. She buys paperbacks like other people buy groceries, and every few weeks I come home with a shopping bag full of hand-me-downs, most of which I never get around to reading.

I never have to buy the latest James Patterson or John Grisham or Janet Evanovich or Patricia Cornwell or Richard North Patterson (I could go on, but you get the point) because I know the week it comes out in paperback, Mom will aquire it and send it my way.

All of this by very long way of introducing the fact that it was her who got me reading Greg Iles, and I look forward to his new material via my dealer. I’m about 160 pages in to Blood Memory, which is a little more than 10, but since the entire novel weighs in near 800 pages, I’m following the spirit if not the letter of my own formula.

It’s a good read. I’m having a hard time putting it down. The main character, Cat Ferry, is a forensic dental expert with a penchant for self-destructive behaviour. The novel is unfolding as two stories, one a set of serial murders in present-day (but hurricane-free) New Orleans, and the second the mysterious death of her own father 20 years before. Early in the story, Cat stumbles across evidence that makes her question the fact that her father was killed by a burglar, but her pursuit of the present-day serial killer and her myriad personal problems interrupt her quest for the truth.

It sounds a little formulaic when I lay it out like that, but it’s a compelling story well told. Cat is the kind of protagonist that a lot of male authors seem to create – smart, sexy, and stormy. She makes some irresponsible choices that make me cringe, but I can still relate to her on the smart and sexy parts at least. (Stop laughing. My book review, my bias.)

At least twice so far, Cat has made mention of Thomas Harris’ book Red Dragon, which is interesting because the story reminds me a lot of Silence of the Lambs. (Red Dragon was the prequel to Silence of the Lambs, where the character of Hannibal Lector is introduced. All books I also got from my mother, for what it’s worth.) Strong, smart lead takes on creepy psychotic guy. I’m sure if I picked up on it, the allusion was intentional on the part of the author, since I’m not one to catch subtleties.

There’s lots of delicious tension in this novel. The past intrudes on the present with an unsettling randomness that seems to be getting less and less random as the story progresses. I’ve lost my taste for a lot of the FBI/serial killer type novels lately, but this one has enough real character development and actual story behind it to make it compulsively readable.

My only complaint is that my wrist gets sore holding an 800 page paperback in bed, although I am grateful for the well-spaced font as I read blearily late into the night. I’ve been up past 10 pm twice this week reading it – that’s the wee hours of the morning by my standards!

Edited to add: I finished this one over the holidays. I kept finding excuses to hide in a corner and read a few more pages. In the end it was a real page turner, but also very disturbing. I didn’t really see anything come of the allusions to Thomas Harris, and the book went in a different direction than I was expecting. It was good, though, and I’ll look forward to the next wrist-breaking Greg Iles book when it comes out in paperback.

Categories:

Toronto Moms and Breastfeeding

Updated December 19: I was curious because I hadn’t heard how the campaign to save the North York General hospital breastfeeding clinic turned out. An article in Sunday’s Globe and Mail confirms the government will not reverse its decision.

This is a shame. Without the support I received from the Ottawa Hospital when Tristan was born, I would never have been able to continue nursing Tristan. Even though he was born weighing 9 lbs, he was borderline failure-to-thrive within a couple of weeks because of the trouble I had getting the latch right. My nipples were blistered and bleeding and I felt like a failure. It was a very dark time in my life, and if it weren’t for the support I got from almost daily visits to the lactation clinic I would have given in to formula. Even my incredibly supportive mother and husband didn’t understand why perservering with breastfeeding was so important to me, when it was obviously causing such dismay and disruption.

As it was, we survived the poor latch, then thrush, then reflux, all within the first three months, and I nursed him until he was almost a year old. I nursed his brother for more than 16 months. I wouldn’t have been able to do it without the lactation clinic.

Some things are more important than the fiscal bottom line.

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As seen at MUBAR:

December 9, 2005
To All Supporters of Dr. Newman’s NYGH Clinic:

As you know, I am running the campaign to save Dr. Newman’s NYGH breastfeeding clinic. In the past few weeks we have obtained over 2200 signatures on our petition and hundreds of letters and emails of support. All have been sent to Minister Smitherman and various others in the Ministry of Health, as well as to NYGH administrators. We have also sent several supportive articles to prove the benefits and cost savings breastfeeding brings to our health care system. We have obtained media attention from CFRB, CBC radio, CTV, Global, CBC National News, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, The Bayview Post, The Town Crier and The North York Mirror.

Despite all of our attempts, both NYGH and the Ministry of Health have not responded to our concerns or requests to either reinstate the NYGH clinic or establish a new publicly funded clinic in Toronto available to all mothers. At this point – based on the information we have obtained about a new ministry funding formula – it appears that there is no hope of persuading NYGH to reinstate the clinic. The hospital insists that mothers will have to find help for breastfeeding difficulties in the community, but there are no unrestricted, full-time, government funded community clinics in Ontario with the presence of a doctor.

Our only hope appears to be to convince the Ministry of Health to assist us in creating and funding a new clinic. To this end we have decided to stage a Nurse-In at Queen’s Park. We believe that this might be the only way to get Mr. Smitherman to pay attention to us. The Nurse-In must be organized quickly because the clinic at NYGH is closing December 15, 2005 and the house begins its winter break on December 16 and will not return to work until mid-February 2006.

We hope to get as many people as possible to commit to coming down to Queen’s Park next Thursday, December 15, 2005 at 11:00 a.m. Babies and children are welcome. If you feel comfortable enough to nurse, we invite you to do so. If not, your presence is all we ask.

Once we have enough people committed to coming to Queen’s Park I will inform Minister Smitherman of our plan. I hope to do this on Monday. We will also inform the media and tell Minister Smitherman that they are aware of the Nurse-In. With any luck, the threat of a protest and media attention will convince the Ministry to take pre-emptive action. But we have to be prepared to follow through if they don’t.

To ensure that people don’t go to Queen’s Park unnecessarily, we will post a web page at http://savetheclinic.smphoto.com with relevant information. This notice will be posted, as will any updates. Please check this page Wednesday evening (December 14, 2005) to find out if the Nurse-In will be held or if it will be cancelled. We will give Minister Smitherman a deadline of Wednesday at 5:00 p.m. so that if he agrees to negotiate with us we have ample time to inform all participants that the Nurse-In is cancelled.

If you are interested in attending or if you know someone who would be, please send me an email ASAP with your contact information, including your email address and phone number. It is important that you let me know if you are coming. I need to know how many people will attend so we can ensure a fair turnout before informing the Ministry of Health and the media and so we can update Mr. Smitherman throughout the week on the number of supporters our campaign has.

Thank you for considering this request. Feel free to forward this email to anyone who might want to participate.

Sincerely
Esther Goldstein
savetheclinic@rogers.com

Deep thoughts

Why is it that a single pair of nylons can survive more than ten trips through the wash and dry cycle and live to see the light of day intact, and yet another pair of the exact same brand develops runs in both ankles within ten minutes of pulling them on?

And whose idea were nylons anyway?

Traditions

Can you stand yet another blog about the Christmas season? No? Too bad! Now that I’m (mostly) done my shopping, and spent a frantic Sunday afternoon whipping up shortbread cookies and peanut brittle by the metric tonne, I’m feeling a little more relaxed and ready to enjoy the holidays.

I think this is going to be a great Christmas, because Tristan and Simon are finally of an age where they can understand what’s going on. My brother and his family will be coming ‘home’ for Christmas, too, and his son Noah is just over a year old now, so it will be a Christmas with three preschool boys in the house. I remember the Christmases just a few years ago that seemed so sedate with nothing but adults in the house – a lovely time with family, but nothing compared to the delicious chaos that comes when energetic kids are set loose on mounds of presents.

For as long as I can remember, we’ve opened our presents Christmas Eve. We’d do Christmas Eve with my father’s parents in our house, and do our family exchange then. On Christmas Day, ‘Santa’ would leave one present under the tree, and then we’d go to my mother’s family’s house for dinner and more presents with that side of the family. My Granda died when I was 10 and my Granny moved in with us when I was 12 (my mom’s parents), and I think we mostly kept opening presents Christmas Eve because everybody in the family except me likes to sleep in. Lazy sots.

When we were in our twenties and living on our own but still coming home for Christmas, one year my mother suggested she would stop leaving the ‘Santa’ gift under the tree on Christmas morning. My brother and I were scandalized – no Santa present? Not on your life! So up until the last Christmas we spent in London, Tristan’s first Christmas, there were Santa presents and stockings on Christmas morning.

Now that my folks are here, and since my living room is (marginally) larger, we have Christmas Eve at our place. We’ve toyed with the idea of moving to Christmas morning for the presents, but so far this works for us. We’re a family resistant to change.

My mother, bless her heart, continues to make Christmas dinner at her place. I am not at all interested in assuming this task because – well, why mess with perfection? That’s another tradition you can count on – turkey dinner with rice-a-roni and potato salad. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized this traditional Donders family dinner hauled out for Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving and a few rare treats in between, is a little different from the turkey with all the trimmings the neighbours might be eating. But there is no way on god’s green earth you could convince any member of my family to eat anything else for the holidays. (One night, feeling particularly lonely and homesick shortly after my divorce, I cooked up a box of rice-a-roni as comfort food. You should never eat an entire box of rice-a-roni on its own. It took three days of drinking litres of water to wash the salt out of my system.)

All this to say, traditions in our family run the gamut from presents on Christmas Eve to rice-a-roni with the turkey. They are evocative of Christmases past and times shared in love.

What are your more unusual family traditions?

(Edited to add: you MUST go over to Dean Dad’s blog and read his hilarious post on Lutefisk – I dunno, it’s some kind of fish soaked in lye (!) – and other Scandanavian torture traditions. Really, go now.)

Spirit of the season – and more reasons to cheer!

I was sitting in the car, waiting to make a left-hand turn into the queue for Tim Hortons, getting a couple of extra-large coffees as a Saturday morning treat for Beloved and myself. It was mid-morning on Saturday, when all of suburbia is also in the drive-thru line.

I was feeling stellar, having already been to the gym, been to the post-office to send off the last of my holiday packages, and been to the dollar store where I acquired FOUR hockey sticks and FOUR pucks for four bucks.

As I was about to make the left turn into the queue, a red car coming from the other direction cut me off and took my spot, despite my desperate and increasingly unfriendly gesculations to indicate my rightful ownership of the next place in line. The car was full of a family, parents in the front and two young girls in the back, and I muttered to myself about the poor example those obviously unmannered parents were setting for their girls. I steamed for a few minutes, and threw a few uncharitable glares in their direction, but by the time it was my turn to collect my coffees, I had mostly forgotten all about it.

I pulled up to the window, $5 in hand, and the server informed me with a friendly grin that my coffees had been paid for, by the family in the red car.

How great is that? Such a simple gesture, really not even entirely necessary, and yet it made my day.

So I went home, and we had a blast with our new hockey sticks:

I couldn’t wait to come down and blog what a great morning I’d been having when I took a peek at the comments from yesterday and saw this comment from my old friend who is now a Mommy Abroad in Germany. The Toronto Star ran a featurette this morning on the ‘momosphere’, and I got good face time beside Ann, Jen and Andi. How cool is that? Take a look here for the full article on the ‘momosphere’.

So if you’re dropping by from the Star article – welcome! Drop me a note and let me know you’ve been by, and do drop in again. And don’t forget to visit Ann and Jen and Andi’s blogs – they’re my bloggy heroes.

Saavy shopper or cheapskate?

This is the story of one woman’s obsessive quest to save a few pennies at Christmas.

A couple of weeks ago, Simon started showing a lot of interest in Tristan’s Leap Pad (the one for the 4 – 8 year old age range), but we don’t like to leave him alone to play with it, partly because he hasn’t quite mastered the dexterity to manouever the pen, and partly because he still shows an alarming tendency to tear paper when you least expect it.

Long story short (too late!) we decided to get him his own My First Leap Pad (the one for 3 – 5 year olds) for Christmas.

On Wednesday night, we were in WalMart and they had them for $37.50, which seemed like a pretty good price, but they only had them in pink. Now, I’m not overly into the whole gender specificism by colour thing, but Beloved pointed out that Tristan’s is blue, which will matter much more in the long run, so we held off on buying the Leap Pad itself.

We did buy a Wiggles book and cartridge for the Leap Pad for $17. Did I mention Simon is completely obsessed with the Wiggles now? We have two Wiggles colouring books from the dollar store that we’ve had to replace three times so far, they’ve been so dog-eared from being carried around and paged through and drooled on and loved.

The next day, we were at Loblaws, and they had *blue* My First Leap Pads for $40. Close enough, I said to myself, and bought one.

Saturday, we were at Toys R Us (yes, two Saturdays before Christmas and I brought Tristan to Toys R Us. One word – mayhem.) and I was delighted to see My First Leap Pad on sale for $34.50, and book sets on sale for $12.97, so I bought a Thomas the Tank Engine book set and another My First Leap Pad, with the intention of returning the one I bought at the grocery store. I also bought Tristan a Madagascar book/cartridge package for his Leap Pad, valiantly trying to hide everything from Tristan during the 20 minute checkout line up.

I got to the car and realized I had been charged full price for the Thomas book, so pulled Tristan out of his car seat and braved the customer service desk (on a Saturday, two weeks before Christmas!) to get the correction made. Turns out the My First Leap Pad book sets are the only Leap Pad stuff not on sale. Grrr. Decide to keep it anyway, trudge back to the car and go home.

On Tuesday, I was in Zellers (can you tell I’m a last-minute shopper) and they had their entire line of Leap Pad products on for 50% off. So I bought yet *another* My First Leap Pad, for $20, with the intention of returning the first one to Loblaws and the second one to Toys R Us.

Today in the flyers, I noticed that Toys R Us is advertising the books and cartridges for My First Leap Pad at 50% off starting tomorrow, so when I bring back My First Leap Pad #2, I can also get a correction for the Thomas the Tank Engine books we bought on Saturday full price.

Still with me?

A recap: After buying three My First Leap Pads for $40, $34.50 and $20, plus the Wiggles book for $17 and the Thomas book for $20, soon to be reduced for $10, the total gift cost went from $77 to $47.

As long as I haven’t lost any of my receipts (odds are 2:3 in favour), and if you don’t count the opportunity cost of six hours of driving all over hells half acre in the festive (insanity) season, I think I come out ahead.

What has been the gift that has caused you the most grief this year? Or, are you doing your shopping next Saturday in Shoppers Drug Mart??

Terrible tantrums

He still has a few weeks to go, but he’s always been a little ahead of the curve. My normally placid, good-natured Simon is entering the terrible twos.

Ugh, I’d forgotten about the tantrums. I mean, I have a temper, Tristan has a temper, and Beloved has a temper (on a bad day, stay the heck out of the way!) but holy crap, this kid can pitch a fit on a moment’s notice. This is a short phase, right? Simon is the exact age now that Tristan was when Simon was born, so I guess I wasn’t paying too much attention to Tristan developmentally at this age. Wow, what a handful that must have been, with a toddler and a newborn in the house. Good thing I can’t remember it.

One problem I’m having with Simon that I know we didn’t have with Tristan is hitting. Whenever he gets piqued, he hits to show his displeasure. Any thoughts on how to deal with that? We tell him no, and we’ve done the toddler version of the time-out, which he thinks is a game and quite fun. I’ve yelled at him for it, which makes both of us unhappy. I’m opposed to the idea of spanking, so I’m forever saying “We don’t hit each other. Ever.” but it doesn’t seem to be making any sort of impression on him. On Sunday, he threw the mother of all tantrums and started grabbing and pulling on my hair when the hitting wasn’t making his point clearly enough for his liking. I was not impressed.

He’s 22 months old, so he doesn’t hit hard, but he’s a big boy and I worry constantly that when they’re out playing with their mates, my boys will run over the other kids like steamrollers unless I teach them to be gentle from the beginning.

Any thoughts?

(Oh, and it’s the last day of voting for the Weblog Awards (phew!) so if you’re feeling charitable and you don’t have an instant solution for my hitting problem, click over and cast your final ballot. No more awards, I promise!)