At my god-mother's funeral, there were some two hundred neighbours, relatives, and friends present. I noticed that I, my cousins, second cousins, etc, were, almost all of us, a head taller than our parents' generation, born in the war years with scarcity of food and everything else.
The Only-begotten Son passed me in length quite a while ago and I now have to reach up to tousle his hair.
But when he got on the stage today to receive his graduation prize he was the shortest of the young men up there. Where will this end?
No… Try as I might, I just can't manage to coolly drop that in passing…
MY SON GRADUATED FROM HIGH SCHOOL AT THE TOP OF HIS CLASS TODAY AND I'M PROUD TO THE POINT OF BURSTING!
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Rambling recollections of an aging engineer
About Me
- kai
- Back in academia after a decade in industry, with a new generation of students.
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2008
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May
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- Veckans ord: oread
- Secular trends
- Used up
- Betrayed trust
- Towel Day
- An outing
- Veckans ord: genrepar
- Double feature
- Counting my blessings
- Shameless speculation
- With this in our past, where is our future?
- This is what flying was meant to be like!
- Veckans ord: orkidé
- Quarneval
- Veckans ord: markanden
- Go shop!
- Tea, toast, and typesetting
- Squarely in the uncanny zone
- Planing out
- Veckans ord: farhinder
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May
(20)
Recently read
- Les Hydravions de la Luftwaffe Vol 2 J-L Roba & H-W Neulen, ft M Ledet. These books really grow on you.
- Les Hydravions de la Luftwaffe, Vol 1 J-L Roba & M Ledet, ft C Cony & H-W Neulen. There are two more volumes.
- Teknisk specifikation SIS/TS 904501:2021 Ergonomi vid människa-systeminteraktion – Användbarhetsrond SIS/TK 380. And now to implement.
- Pilot i Den Danska Brigaden i Sverige under Andra Världskriget: Svensk-dansk flyghistoria A Sandqvist. A tiny corner of history.
- Handbook of Usability Testing: How to Plan, Design, and Conduct Effective Tests, 2nd ed J Rubin & D Chisnell. Friendly and complete, if slightly dated.
- What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy J P Gee. I need to study more pedagogics.
Places I keep track of
- IPMS Stockholm One of the best plastic modelling forums you'll find.
- Hyperscale More modelling stuff.
- Occasional kvetch Thnidu is a linguist and an old friend.
- Another CyborgManifesto Small and large, always with alarming skill.
- Aardvarchaeology What kind of archaeologist doesn't have a whip or even a fedora?
- Arkland Archaeology and random bits.
- Pharyngula Biology, politics and atheism. And eight-legged animals.
- Piled Higher and Deeper Mike Slackenerny, that's me. Free food, anyone?
- Something positive Magical realism in a very cynical way.
- Chicken Wings It's about birds…that fly…
- xkcd Don't miss the mouse-overs.
6 comments:
Congratulations, Alvin! The world needs people like you!
(We have our landmarks too. Signe just got upgraded to the big-kids section of daycare. And her brother has become independently mobile on his bike and with his door keys, coming and going as he wishes, communicating with ground control by cell phone.)
Thank you, I will forward your congratulations—the young man is now away to explore the wild and uncharted regions of Västergötland.
Good to hear that your children are growing up too. Strange, isn't it? :-)
I recently read that Swedish children have over time gotten restricted to areas closer and closer to their home. While parents a hundred years ago (and actually still in my childhood in the then almost-out-in-the-country area I grew up in) might let their kids run around in the forest all day and only come home for dinner, parents these days are more anxious and are basically keeping kids in the yard. Now lately, mobile phones let parents keep an ear on their kids over much longer distances, so perhaps they'll get to range a bit further again. (The fundamental limiter today for smaller children is of course cars, much more likely to kill children than bears and wolves ever were, so everywhere there is a heavily-trafficked road it will be an uncrossable moat for small children.)
A late but sincere congratulation to you 8and your son too, but of course he has his father to thank for everything he is ;-)
Tomorrow evening me and my man will attend a meeting at the school where our First Daughter will start pre-school class this August. She's taking it in stride, we are both nervous wrecks.
I hate the fact that our paranoia keeps the kids so restricted, at least we have a good yard with many other kids. When I was 4 I roamed practically free in the large building complex where I grew up, but I loose it if my kids disappear from view for more than 2 minutes. Every time I start to think we are over protective, something horrible like Madeleine or Engla happens and its back to 0.
Well, the children's mother certainly deserves some credit—she's both smarter and more pedagogical than I…
It has taken a conscious effort to let go of the children and not be too much of a helicopter parent. We'll see when they leave home how they manage.
Mazel tov!
The Only-begotten Son, recently returned from the Middle of Nowhere where they have real horses and cows, thanks you all for the kind words.
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