Appointment

Today I was informed that I've been appointed as a member of the Watertown Bicycle and Pedestrian Committee for a term ending February 15, 2011. This is an official town government (volunteer) position which is appointed by the town manager (this means Mayor, except chosen by the town council instead of by a vote from the people), so I actually had to interview with Michael Driscoll. The committee's current goals range from making sure people shovel snow in from of their houses so children can get to school safety to planning a new bike pathway from the city hall to the Cambridge Fresh Pond area east of town. I'm excited.

Free Text Books

A week and a half ago the governor of the state of California announced the conclusion of Phase I of a program to evaluate "Free Digital Textbooks". Organizations who produce textbooks submitted a total of 16 manuscripts for review by the board of education. Ten of these met 90% of the standards required for acceptance as a sanctioned textbook for student use and four met 100% of the standards for the subjects they covered.

• CK-12 Foundation’s CK-12 Single Variable Calculus
  
• CK-12 Trigonometry
  
• CK-12 Chemistry
  
• Dr. H. Jerome Keisler’s Elementary Calculus: An Infinitesimal Approach

Of these, 3 out of 4 come from ck12.org which is run by the not-for-profit organization called the CK-12 Foundation.

I say, a BIG KUDOS to the fine men and women at CK-12 for the fine job they've done developing educational material which will have huge benefits for educators and children throughout the country. Keep up the good work!

Free Things to Do

My dream is to live in a world that affords me the opportunity to always have three or four fun choices for activities which don't cost anything. Currently, this is somewhat possible but there's still a need to make funds available in the bin that's reserved for "entertainment". In this post, I'm going to talk about striking a balance between having lots of fun and spending very little money. However, before we get started I've got to point out that nothing in life is ever free and that everything has a cost (even if it's not an obvious one). Also, to constrain the conversation I am going to limit myself to talking about things that I like doing.

Tennis - A couple years ago I bought a pair of rackets for about $40 each and a big pack of balls for about $15. I got two rackets knowing that most people don't own their own rackets so I best have two if I ever wanted to do anything besides hit a ball against the wall. And indeed, owning two rackets served me well when I had the opportunity to play my two brothers every few weeks. However, since moving to the Boston area most of the matches I've played have been with people who actually have their own equipment. Nonetheless, there was a period where playing in Cambridge meant hoping for a court to be open because on nice days there are lots of other people with the same idea. Since then, I've learned that I have some leverage to take advantage of reservation systems to mitigate this. Also, lately I've enjoyed matches in Watertown where the suburban lifestyle don't quite fill the courts as well as the urban one does. Thus, tennis as a free activity is currently on the top of the list.

Biking - Like tennis in that you gotta buy the initial equipment, but more complicated because buying a second bicycle for a friend isn't practical. Also, bike tires pop and mechanical parts wear out so there are maintenance costs to consider. As far as riding goes, I haven't even begun to explore the miles of bike paths in my neighborhood because of a severe lack of friends who share this interest. Also, I recently had a flat tire incident (which really deserves a post of its own) and I haven't actually ridden since then. That said, I really like biking when there are other people to go do it with so I'm willing to put it second on this list.

Parks - When I was young the best thing to do was to go to the town park and play in the giant sand pit by the swingsets that were behind the junior field snack bar. They was a old-fashioned wooden merry-go-round to get hurt on and a ten to fifteen feet tall metal slide to whip down. And that was just in my own little town. If we hopped in the car and drove a mile there was a three story wooden maze as big as a house which we affectionately called the Castle. That thing had a tire swing next to it that three kids easily fit in. Now that I'm older the best thing to do at parks is take a walk or throw a frisbee. In any case... it's a good time.

Parties - I've always liked parties. They come in all shapes and sizes from house parties to weddings (though I much prefer a good house party over a fancy-pants wedding). I've gone to the same place for a Super Bowl party every year for the last four years. I've gone to a Rock Band party for the past two years and the third one is coming up later this month. I've hosted a "Make your own pizza" party during each of the last two years. In college there were parties where the object was to get drunk and get laid. At any stage of life there are parties for birthdays which may or may not be surprises. Yeah, everybody likes a good party and it's mostly free for everybody except the guy throwing it with the exception of when you have to bring a gift or for an adult party when you have to BYOB.

City Festivals - The parade for Memorial Day? The firework at July 4th? The tomfoolery during St. Patrick's Day? The free band at Harvard Square Mayfair? My current town has one called Faire on the Square. The point is... large public gatherings on the city's dime rock!

Public Exhibitions - All those "Free movie nights" and "Public concerts" fall under this category. As do art shows that you don't have to pay an entrance fee to enter. Earlier in the year I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met) near Central Park in NYC with my little sister. Last weekend I went to Shakespeare in the Boston Common to see a performance of "Comedy of Errors" with my girlfriend. Often, they solicit donations and try to sell tee-shirts at these otherwise "free" events. Sometimes they offer food for sale at Yankee Stadium prices. But ultimately, I think the biggest cost of these events is getting there. Inevitably, events like this are in the center of big cities which means huge parking fees if you drive or navigating the public transit if you don't. But in most cases, I think the minor hassle of figuring out transportation is small compared to the fun of a good public exhibition.

Frisbee - I mentioned frisbee earlier. It's not worth going into too much more detail here. But a big field with a mildly calm wind day and a few friends is always a good time.

I have more things to list, but I'm not going to elaborate on them because I think you get the idea. Hitting the gym, because even though you pay for you membership the cost of going three times a week is still free. Reading, because imagination is a beautiful thing. Concerts, because good music from a local band can be really, really awesome. Hanging Out, because you don't need anything fancy to do when you have good friends. Free Xyz Day, especially when Xyz is an ice cream cone from Ben and Jerry's. Movies on TV, because a lazy night at home with a good flick on the tube is a good cure for a week that was packed with a dozen other free events.

On Blogging

I think many writers use their internet logs for selfish purposes. Advertising pollutes many of their sites. Insincere product reviews are gaining more and more attention in the media from writers who receive free product in exchange for positive publicity. One particularly sullied demographic has been internet logs authored by "Women responsible for the upbringing of a child they brought into the world". These so-called "Mom Blogs" are a black stain on the internet. Though, the most successful ones have spent the last year trying to gain legitimacy. Various Public Relations Blackouts and Blogger Ethics movements have swept through their ranks. The Federal Trade Commission has even kicked off their own investigation to figure out how to regulate the bloggers.

Anyway, my curiosity got the better of me today and I searched for a list of these "Mom Blogs" and filtered through the thousands of listings until I found one that looked good enough to click. It said, "Coffee in the morning, cocktails in the evening". Now, maybe it's my personal bias that drew me this site and I can't claim that this is representative of all the "Mom Blogs" but the woman in charge of the one I found was a piece of work. First off, she had announced her retirement from that particular account back in June. I found it fascinating that somebody could formally quit something like a "Mom Blog". This anonymous woman, during her last few posts, claimed (a) a mental breakdown, (b) a need to find a source of income for the upcoming year, (c) that she had started a different internet log site that was more popular, and (d) she was frustrated giving her readers a one-way window into her life in a way that hurt her real social life. Taken separately, there's nothing alarming about any of these individual points. But as a whole, they add up to a woman who I would call unfit to raise a child. This leads me to the hope that the FTC works with child protective services when they conduct their investigations into the ethics and morality of "Mom Blogs" so they can rescue these poor kids from a life of exploitation.

But I digress. I need to substantiate this claim that these four points add up to an unfit mother. Well, point (b) indicates that the woman lacks financial security to raise a kid. This is not necessarily a bad thing if the woman has a support network (be it family, friends, or federal) and a plan to get financial security sometime in the future. However, (d) indicates that there is no support network behind this woman, and (c) indicates that that her "plan" to get financial security is through starting yet another internet log. I predict that internet log #2 will be just unprofitable as her "Mom Blog", and that this will lead to more frustration and yet another (a) which won't be good for her kid.

Granted, I only looked at 1 of the 10,000 "Mom Blogs" but it seems unlikely to me that I found a needle in the giant stack of hay. That is to say that parents should spend less time trying to foolishly monetize the internet and more time raising their bloody children. This will make the world better for everybody. And for goodness sakes, wake up and smell the coffee that monetizing the internet is a job best left to professionals and not the modern day equivalent of the oil prospectors who helped settle the American Midwest. And much like the prospectors of yesteryear, the only successful ones were the ones who got there first... so if a "Mom Blog" isn't established yet, I predict it never will be.

Word-if-ication

Has anybody else noticed a recent trend to add the suffix "-cation" at the end of regular sounding words to make them sound fun, vibrant, and uplifting? Once upon a time in past decades it was a perennial tradition for people to jump on a plane and take a "vacation". But we're all poor now because banking turdbags have taken all of our money so marketing weinies and quote-journalists-unquote have decided that we need new words to raise our spirits up high. It began last summer when prices for gas and airline tickets spiked and the country began taking "staycations" (I am relieved for spellchecker to tell me that this is not a word), where families would, presumably, enjoy quality time at home instead of flying to Florida to worship at the alter of the 6-foot tall mouse. Now the phrase that is in vogue is the "day-vacation" which refers to a simple lifestyle where mom and dad will bring to little ones to a local water park or (if Exxon/Mobil "On The Run" advertisements are to be believed) to the gas station to fill up on Gatorade. So where is this trend heading towards? I have a few ideas. Instead of spending tens of thousands of dollars on elaborate dresses and fancy receptions, weddings of the future will be "bride-cations" and "groom-cations" where the happy couple will go down to a big public hall with a beauty salon on one side, a bar containing big screen TV's showing sports on the other side, and a buffet table in the middle. Enjoyable, informal, relaxing, and cheap enough to hold the bonds of marriage together for many decades. You won't own any cars in the future. You'll hail a taxi or ride a train or bus everywhere and call it a "trip-cation". People will stop going out on dates due the social pressures and the exorbitant costs of impressing potential mates. Instead, you'll just jump into bed and sort out your compatibility during a "lay-vacation" to see if you're right for each other. And if you can't find a potential mate to engage in this last activity, you can rest easy knowing you can hire somebody and take them on a "wh0re-cation" with you. Not feeling good enough to go to work? Flu-cation. Injured because of somebody's negligence? Sue-cation. Visiting your uncle at his farm? Moo-cation. Taking your dog out for a walk? Poo-cation. Wanna feel like a king? Master-cation. Just want to get away from all this idiosyncratic phraseology? Then, maybe it's time to head over to your travel agent and get them to book you a real, honest vacation.