Christmas letter 2014

Summerstay Christmas letter 2014

Doug has enjoyed his work on artificial intelligence and his visits to Texas, Germany, and Ireland this year. Daniel also enjoyed his first trip out of the country (Germany) and agitates for an anti-disciplinarian political stance in his community. Besides piano and boy scouts, he has also joined the robotics club and started playing church basketball. He is 12. Lesli made some sculptural molds of Daniel’s face (the first sculpture she’s done since Daniel was born) and wants everyone to know that, as P.G. Wodehouse says, into each life some rain must fall.

Laws and Mottos

Doug [Reading from robotics merit badge pamphlet]- Name some safety hazards of working with robots etc...

Daniel [confused]- You mean that they might become self-aware and try to take over the world?

Doug [lets that answer pass]- Next question—what safety equipment should be worn to prevent these hazards?

Daniel- Bullet proof vests, fireproof clothes—oh, and have a surgeon on duty at all times.

[From the website ‘Humans of New York’

"What's the best piece of advice your dad has ever given you?"

"No excuses."]

(the Cosmos continued)

Doug [at library]- What makes SF better than other genres is when you see a title, there's a chance that's what the book might actually be about. For example, this book: Ghost Light. Sounds pretty cool, right? How does ghost light work? Is there an entire ghost physics? But no, it's just some guy's memoirs about the film industry. In the other genres, they recognize that it would be cool, so they make it the title, but then the book doesn't follow through. It's just a stupid metaphor.

[Other books that would be so much better if they were actually about what their title claimed:

The Grapes of Wrath

Under the Volcano

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Pale Fire

Death Comes for the Archbishop

Midnight's Children

The Sheltering Sky]

Daniel [to Lesli, after reading the above]- The best advice my dad ever gave me was, “There's always an excuse.”

Doug- My Dad told me, “If you can't fix it, try using a larger hammer.”

Daniel- You also say, “If it's just barely worth doing, just barely do it.”

Daniel- My motto for my coat of arms is, “No pain, no pain.”

Doug- What are some opposites of the Scout law that are still virtues?

For example: Trustworthy: Trusting

Lesli- That's not the opposite.

Doug- Whatever, the converse or something.

We came up with:

Loyal: inspires loyalty

Helpful: willing to ask for help

Friendly: private or reserved

Courteous: etiquette Nazi (Daniel's idea)

Kind: Honest

Thrifty: Generous

Brave: Cautious

Clean: Willing to get your hands dirty

Reverent: Funny (Daniel's idea)

The Purpose of Life

Lesli- Everything is awful. They've stopped carrying the food I want at Costco. It's the story of my life.

Doug- Do you want to hear the story of my life?

Lesli- No. Fine, go ahead.

Doug- I'm a buff baby that can dance like a man!

Lesli- I don't understand why Daniel thinks that is funny.

[Apparently Doug was quoting the TV show ‘Adventure Time.’]

[I still don't understand why they think this is funny. -lesli]

Lesli- My life has no purpose.

Daniel [immediately]- The purpose of your life is to be a warning to others.

[He was referencing the below poster]

Perception and Reality

Lesli- March 26- I was complaining about the snow today (it was really pretty blowing across the road--but the frozen landscape looked and felt like January--low 20's) and Daniel said, "It's the first snow of spring. How lovely."

Daniel- In [the video game] Kings Quest 1 you reach into a hollow stump and there is a packet of diamonds in it. Upon seeing a similar log on a walk in the woods once, we decided to see what was in it—inside of it was litter. I then said, “Kings Quest: diamonds. Real life: litter.”

[looking at pictures of the Bardarbunga volcano erupting in Iceland]

Lesli- It's so weird that the earth does this sometimes.

Daniel- It's like throwing up.

Bardarbunga photos

Daniel is bummed that he's sick on days when there is no school anyway and expressed the desire that he stay sick until school starts back up again so that he can get off school. At least he has his priorities straight.

Lesli- you need to eat more healthfully.

Daniel- I eat all four food groups.

Lesli- you haven't had any vegetables in a week.

Daniel- I mean I have eaten food from all food groups.

Lesli- you need to eat them all every day!

Lesli- Come read this funny thing on Facebook. Daniel- Can you put one of those outside of your room?

Philosophical Scribbles

Daniel- When you try to put on paper what is in your mind, you end up just making a few random scribbles, and they frame it and put it in the museum and call it modern art. And then they put it in the Guggenheim, which is quarantine for all the bad art.

Lesli [trying to read cursive writing]- What is this guy’s name? Andre what?

Daniel- Maybe Andre I-am-such-a-tool-of-society-that-I-actually-use-cursive?

Douglas- Maybe “Andre Lidros?”

Lesli- That's what I thought, too, but what if that “L” is actually a “B?”

Daniel- See, this is why cursive doesn't help the world but rather diminishes it.

Postmodernism and Irony

[Daniel's chemistry homework asked him to explain the difference between intensive and extensive properties. For example, density and reflectivity are intrinsic because they don’t depend on how much of a substance you have, while mass, volume, and size are extrinsic. This got Doug a little upset]

Doug- This isn't chemistry! This is Medieval Philosophy! They're teaching him Alchemy! This is form versus substance! Spirit versus Matter! This “classical model” has gone too far!

Daniel- Well, the classical model does date back to Charlemagne's time.

[Later, Doug calmed down a bit...]

Doug- I guess I don't care if they teach you about intensive and extensive properties, as long as you keep in mind that in reality, out in the world, there aren't any intensive and extensive properties. It's just a useful way of dividing things up in our heads. It's not a real division that exists in the natural world.

Daniel- So there are some kinds of divisions that happen out in the world, and some just exist in our heads.

Doug- Right. You could call them intrinsic categories and extrinsic categories. This is getting uncomfortably ironic.

Doug [helping Daniel with homework]- .9 repeating is exactly equal to one.

Daniel- This destroys my faith in the reasonability of mathematics.

Doug- Well, look. 1/3 is equal to .3 repeating, right?

Daniel- Yes.

Doug- Well, ‘.3 repeating’ multiplied by 3 is ‘.9 repeating’, but 1/3 times 3 is 1. So if you believe the one fact you should believe the other.

Daniel- you've convinced me. I no longer believe that .3 repeating equals 1/3.

[At Wendy’s drive through]

Lesli [in an excited voice]- Why yes, I would like to try a combo meal!!

Daniel [while watching movie ‘Punch Love’ w/ Pierce Brosnan]- They’re making fun of Texans.

Lesli- Everybody makes fun of Texans—except Texans, who celebrate Texans.

Doug- The things Texans do to celebrate Texans are the same things everyone else does to make fun of Texans.

The Cosmos

Daniel- Wouldn’t it be neat if we could see 13.8 billion light years away, because then we could see the big bang happening (even though it isn’t still happening)?

Daniel- I’m always wishing I lived in an earlier time, but I calm myself by knowing that in the future people will be wishing they lived in my time.

[Apparently there are a lot of asteroids bigger than Pluto and they don’t want to make all of them planets.]

Lesli- But I think they should let Pluto be an honorary planet because it’s always been a planet.

Daniel- It’s like saying, “You have to go back to kindergarten because there are kindergartners taller than you.”

Being and Nothingness

[on a long car ride to go see a castle in Germany]

Daniel- I want you to come up with the most difficult possible thing for 20 questions.

Doug- got it.

Daniel- Animal, mineral, or vegetable?

Doug- Oh, no. Nothing that simple.

(later)

Daniel- Is it a book?

Doug- The concept is the title of a book, yes.

Daniel- Have I read it?

Doug- No.

Daniel- Have you read it?

Doug- no.

(much, much later...)

Daniel- The unbearable lightsaber of being?

Doug- you're almost there.

[The actual answer was The Unbearable Lightness of Being.]

[About a ceramic tile we ordered with Daniel's drawing on it]

Lesli- This thing was made all the way in China when we ordered it here? That's ridiculous.

Daniel- Well, actually, all of our stuff travels around the world more than we do. I'd rather be a T-shirt.

Daniel- if I grow up to be an adult and...

Lesli- wait—if you grow up to be an adult? What do you think you'll grow up to be?

Daniel- I wish God was an elephant. Then all people would be elephants.

Lesli- That couch is not the place to be eating soup.

Doug [watching cartoon about zombie donut creatures]- I'm an adult.

Philosophy of Language

[Merrick and Daniel go to the same school, so they carpool to Merrick’s house, where they play until Douglas picks them up]

Merrick [to Daniel]- Do you think we could have done a lot more playing that one day if my Dad didn't talk so long with Anna? [Another student at their school- Daniel’s age]

Daniel- Yes.

Merrick- I mean, do you remember how long that was? That was like a full on grown-up conversation!

Lesli- What does IMHO mean again?

Daniel- I am home alone? Wait, no.

I don't know.

Daniel- [makes transforming sound with his voice] CH sh sh Ch sh sh CH. That's autobotopoeia.

[talking about New Hampshire to Daniel]

Elena [8 year old cousin]- Maybe the person who named it had a new hampster so they decided to name it after their hamster.

Daniel, half-awake in his bed, hears Alexandra [5 year old cousin spending night] get up early in morning and use bathroom next to his room. He hears Alexandra singing to herself while using the potty, “I have pees like a river, I have pees like a river.” It was only after she sang the rest of the song that he realized she wasn’t singing about peeing like a river, she was singing “I have peace like a river.”

Doug- ‘道 Do’ means ‘way’ as in ‘way of fighting.’ So ‘柔道 judo’ would be the ‘柔 ju’ way of fighting.

Daniel [joking]- Oh! So that's how Jacob defeated God in a wrestling match: with Jewdo.

The Nature of Evil

Lesli- whatever my faults, I'm not as evil as Genghis Kahn.

Doug- Was it Cortez who conquered the Incas?

Daniel- No, it was Pizzaro. I kind of like Cortez but I hate Pizzaro.

Doug- Oh yeah, the way he looks like a blocky version of Superman and does everything backwards? What a jerk.

Daniel- One letter off, Poppy.