April 2004 Archives

 We had our 18th week ultrasound appointment today. I'd been with Jfer to most of her meetings but this was was the coolest so far. The sonogram setup is pretty neat -- the acoustic sensor is hooked up to a machine that converts the ultrasound to a grayscale image. That is then displayed on a computer which allows the technician to make measurements (point and click), to annotate them (i.e. femur length) and to transfer the images and data to yet another computer for later review. There is also a VCR that you can tape the images on. I made a QuickTime movie form our tape, but you can't see all that much in it.

After the nurse put some gel on Jfer's belly, she did some measurements on her organs (splotches in different shades of gray) and then moved on to Junior. Often it was rather hard to make out what we were looking at, but at times the images were very clear. We got a good look at almost everything (we didn't look when the nurse was checking out the privates). It's pretty neat when you see the beating heart, ribs, fingers and profile of a face. Some of it looks rather freaky -- especially the frontal view of the face (I told Jfer that she's carrying Skeletor), since what you really see is a cross-section of the bones. At times, Junior was pretty active moving his arms and legs. He or she also looked rather cramped.

The nurse said that everything seemed to check out fine. She took a ton of measurement and each measurement displayed the estimated age of the fetus -- they all were between 18 weeks and 4 days and 19 weeks.

I must admin, it was a bit surreal standing there and watching my progeny on the screen. Jfer thinks that she felt the baby move for the first time on Sunday at the movies. I don't really have that connection yet, but I'm looking forward to it. I can understand why some people go out and get a non-medical 3D or 4D ultrasound.

I was listening to some of the Supreme Court Guantanamo Hearings on the radio yesterday. The issue is whether the "enemy combatants" imprisoned on the Guantanamo base have a right to have a federal court review the justness of their imprisonment. It was fascinating hearing the justices' voices -- they all sound so profound and erudite, no matter what their position is.

I find the Justice Department's position and case appalling. They are basically claiming that since Guantanamo is not part of the US and the prisoners are not US citizens, US law does not apply to them. And since the government deems they do not qualify as prisoners of war, the Geneva Convention does not apply to them, either. It boils down to this: if the government claims (not proves -- simply claims) that you are an "enemy combatant" and ships you off to Guantanamo, you have no legal right whatsoever to request that they prove your "guilt". They can keep you locked up for however long they choose (it's been over two years for some of the prisoners) and there is nothing you or anyone else can do about it.

According to the US Constitution, a prisoner has the right to petition for a "writ of habeas corpus" which is a judicial mandate ordering that an inmate be brought to the court so it can be determined whether or not that person is imprisoned lawfully and whether or not he should be released from custody. Habeas corpus has been an integral part of english law for over 300 hundred years forced on the English Parliament in response to abusive detention of persons without legal authority. It became part of the US Constitution and guarantees one of our fundamental civil liberties and protections against an abusive government.

The government argues that since Guantanamo is not part of the US, the US Constitution does not apply. Considering that US law has been in effect on Guantanamo for over a century and that the prisoners don't have the option to appeal to Fidel to get their cases heard, think this argument is really questionable. But even if that were the case, indeterminable detainment without any form of recourse just feels fundamentally wrong. This type of law is the hallmark of tyrants and dictators (think Stalin, Pinochet, Saddam, etc.) -- the US should be better than that and people should not stand for it.

Every time we get ready to leave the house for Homer's walk, before shutting the door, Jfer invariably asks me whether I have my keys, knowing very well that I always do.

Naturally, since she's out of town this weekend, I managed to leave the house with Homer but without keys, wallet or cell phone. Of course, I noticed as soon as I closed the door. During my walk with Homer, I decided that I'd have to break in to the house. I've done it before in similar situations.

Once we got back, I checked out the front door -- yes, definitely locked. I checked out the sliding glass patio doors -- locked as well. The "easy access" windows on our porch and in the bedroom were also locked. I didn't bother with the bathroom windows, 'cause there was no way in hell I'd squeeze through without damage to myself or the house.

Luckily, one of the guest bedroom windows wasn't completely locked (I wonder who our last visitor was...) I managed to take of the solar screen and slide the window open without any damage to the lock or glass. The problem is that the window ledge is about chest height and the window is fairly narrow, there is nothing to stand on the outside and furniture and crap on the inside.

Well, using a 5 gallon bucket as a stepping stool, I managed to squeeze my leg into the window and after a very precarious transition made it across the ledge without hurting my goodies. Once I got a foothold on the inside, I crawled into the bedroom without any major damage to furniture (the chest turned out pretty sturdy) or the stuff on top of it. During this process, Homer eyed me with a baffled expression (but no barking) and nobody seemed to have noticed my burgling, which was clearly visible from the street.

Breaking and Entering (actually, I didn't "break", I just barely "entered") would definitely not be a good career for me. You want to be skinny and flexible if you want to call yourself a cat burglar. And I think that a Neighborhood Watch Program may not be that bad an idea, either.

On Thursday, the Statesman had an excellent article about The cost of political uniformity (you have to register to read it). The gist of the article is that most "Americans live in counties that haven't changed their party preference in presidential elections in more than a generation. That political uniformity comes with a cost ... as followers of the two parties look at the same set of facts and see two different worlds."

It seems in the past the political views were more heterogeneous. Most regions and neighborhoods contained a healthy mix of diverging opinions. Political leaning were more divided by wealth and class as opposed to geographical region. These days, regional politics are more concentrated. You have the liberal cities and coasts and the conservative rural heartland and small town. There are occasional exceptions, but this division is what gives us those red and blue maps we see around election times.

The reason for this, according to the article, is our tendency to surround ourselves with like-minded people. There is nothing strange in that -- for example, you'd go to a game with buddies who root for the same team as opposed to hanging out with the opponents. But would you move to Austin because you're a big Longhorn fan? The prosperity in the '50s and later allowed people to move from place to place, often for economical reasons, when changing jobs or starting out after college. So if you're looking for a new job in another region in America, your political or cultural leanings may influence you where to look and cause you to pick San Francisco over Orange Country, or vice versa.

So what's the problem with that? Well, homogeneity like that leads to mob mentality. When you have a group of like minded people, their like-mindedness tends to drift towards the extreme over time. The tendency is to subconsciously try to be "more true" than the average in the group in order to be more liked, to better fit in and not be viewed as an outcast. So in a liberal setting, members would to express more liberal views than they might in a neutral setting, in order not be appear as a sell out. The same goes for conservatives in a conservative setting.

This sort of thing creates a feedback loop and reinforces itself. Eventually you arrive at positions that, while making complete sense within the context of your group, appear bizarre to outsiders. It also makes it extremely hard to be a moderate in such situations. When a moderate liberal questioned Clinton's morals, their loyalty was suspect. If a moderate conservative questions Bush's economic plans or claims of WMDs, they are viewed as sellouts or potential traitors. This does not lead to healthy and self-critical discourse. Moderate views do not give you the stature and visibility that the more orthodox members of a group have, which makes it pretty much impossible for moderates to make it into leadership positions. That's how we end up with people like Ted Kennedy and Tom DeLay as faces of their parties. Admired by their central cadre, loathed by their opponents, and viewed dubiously by the rest.

The nice converse of these tendencies is that when you mix up members of opposing views, their expressed opinions tend to shift towards the group average. So mix some liberals into a group of conservatives and the tone is going to become more moderate -- same goes the other way. I'm talking about mature and civil discussions and not knee-jerk reactionary stuff where it would be more like pouring water into hot oil. According to the Statesman article, a great example is the Federal Appeals Court where panels of three judges (which are, after all, political appointees) are mixed at random to hear cases. A judge on a panel that only consists of judges from their party tends to rule more in line with the party view -- a "Republican panel" may rule 75% of the time for corporations while a "Democratic panel" may rule 75% of the time against them. But when a judge is on a panel where the other judges are of the opposite party, her opinions drift towards theirs, and theirs towards the single judge's.

So what can you do about this? Since this is human nature, there is not much to change this, but try to be aware of how your opinions, and the way you express them, changes depending of who you're with. And think of these tendencies when you read and hear stories and news. In general, bi-partisan commissions and reports are much more likely to be trust worthy than single-party commissions. Reports from partisan "think tanks" are usually skewed in the direction that pays the bills.

And you can try to infiltrate the other side and help shift their discourse towards the middle. And you may not even have to move to Omaha or San Francisco (or round Rock or South Austin).

Jfer's monthly checkup at the OB went well. All the measurements, weight gain, etc., were right where they are supposed to be.

We got to hear the heart again. Last month it took the nurse some time before she found the heart beat with her microphone -- Junior seemed to be hiding behind the appendix or some weird place -- and the heart was going at over 160 beats per minute. This time she found the heartbeat almost immediatelly. It's nice and loud in the 150s.

A few weeks ago, on the one year aniversary of the war in Iraq, the front page of The Austin American Statesman consisted of the faces of soldiers who had been stationed at Fort Hood and were killed in Iraq. Most of the killed were young, some teens, most in their early twenties, but there were also some my age and older. I read all their names and ranks (though I don't know what all the abbreviations stand for) and wondered about what their friends and families were doing on that day.

Today I ran across this poignant picture named "War President". It was created by some guy named Joe and is a mosaic of George W. Bush made out of the faces of American soldiers who have died in Iraq. A powerful metaphore, especially considering the escalation of violence in the last couple of days.

The mosaic itself consists of 1410 tiles -- that's more than twice the number of the American casualties as of today, but many times less than the number of sick and injured that had to be evacuated out of Iraq. And it doesn't come nowhere close to the number of Iraqi civilians who perished during the war and since the time our "War President" declared "Mission Acomplished".

Jfer's next Dr's appointment is coming up and we need to specify which, if any, blood test she's going to take. The number of screening test they have these days is mind boggling. Dr. Litzinger's ambivalency wasn't particularly helpful -- sure, she doesn't want to push us one way or the other, but sometimes you want be told what to do.

I've sounded out my sister and we had a nice lunch with Mary T. where we got some good pragmatic info. The way we look at it, none of the test really make sense for us. Jfer and I have diverse ethnic backgrounds and she's still young. And since the test have a fairly high false-positive rate they are more likely to lead to unnecessary worries. Besides, a lot of things can apparently be figured through belly measurements (yes, it's getting bigger) and then through ultrasound which we'll have in another month.

So that's our rationale. But really, we just like to be able to put off any decision making.

Somehow our almost-once-a-week movie ritual got interrupted (I think due to our Christmas trip) and we hadn't been to the movies in ages. So last Sunday we went and saw Hellboy. All the reviews were pretty glowing and I must say I wasn't disappointed.

Unlike with Spiderman or the X-Men, I had never even heard of Hellboy before, so I do not know how it compares to the comics. Still, the movie was pretty cool. It had the coloring and mood of a comic book. It wasn't monochromatic, but the lighting was always blueish or olive-ish -- almost like a duotone and it worked to great effect. The other neat thing was that despite all the mayhem, there were like three drops of red blood in the entire movie (OK, there was lots of blue monster blood, but that doesn't count).

So Hellboy gets my thumbs up. Now to get some blood and gore, we might go and see The Passion over this coming weekend.

I can't wait to ask that question for reall. After sneaking around to doctor's appointments and sharing the news with family and work, the cat's out of the bag and the bun's in the oven.

That's right! We came back from our trip to Europe with more than Christmas presents and we'll be expecting the final delivery in September. We don't plan to find out whether it's a he or a she and there have not yet been any name arguments. Knowing our modus operandi, we'll be coming up with names while Jfer's delivering.

So far it has really not affected us very much. Sure, Jfer abstains from drinking (but doesn't have to use the "Lent" excuse anymore) and makes me do chores she's still perfectly capable of doing herself, but beside that, not much has changed. When I compare it to our wedding preparations, this is nothing. Of course, it's the aftermath that's going to be hugely different and lasting a bit longer...

The Gracywoods neighborhood group is shaping up nicely. We had a fairly productive meeting last night. I'm involved with the website/communications committee and have started off by registering gracywoods.org and setting up an initial page. I plan to be involved on the technical side and let the creative types come up with design and content.

I hope that the group manages to gain and sustain momentum. It seems that most neighborhood groups/sites lose steam after a couple of years, atrophy and die off. That would be a shame and I hope we can avoid it. We definitely have some people who know how to run a meeting and organize things (yours truly very much excluded).

Personally, I am not suited group leadership like that. You gotta know where you strengths lie and for me it's not in organization. Plus all that committee lingo makes me feel like some Party Functionary -- it's weird to be in a meeting where people talk without geek speak or references to Office Space.