Sporcle

Some friends introduced me to Sporcle, an extremely addicting quiz website. (I'd say trivia site, but a number of the quizzes shouldn't be considered trivia.) It quickly became a visit every day site. I never mentioned it before because a) the writer's block and b) it was pretty embarrassing that I barely cracked 50% on Countries of the World, yet could get 100% of Name the Network; or that my score on the U.S. Presidents would belie the fact that I ever took advanced placement U.S. History, but I only missed 2 out of 63 on The Simpsons.

Apparently, I am pretty late to the party as the site is very popular. It got a great write up in the Boston Globe, and lo and behold I learn that I know the two founders, Matt and Derek. I used to work with them at Adobe. (I used to play soccer with Matt and throw food at Derek.)

Knowing that, I have to visit the site every day, not just because it is good (and good for you), but because I must support anyone who is crazy enough to quit good, stable day jobs and pursue a wild idea. And you should, too.

The most amazing sight ever

People at work are laughing at me because I am so excited over a fuzzy picture of an oblong that is .74 centimeters long. I keep telling them that the still picture doesn't do it justice. You have to see the live version so you can see the heart beating a mile a minute.

Or maybe it is only because the little .74 centimeter fuzzy oblong is my unborn child. And seeing the heartbeat of my unborn child is truly amazing no matter what the little oblong looks like.

Trish is due Feb. 8th. She is tired, nauseous, excited and giddy. And beautiful. The nurse today said everything looks perfect - the heart rate, the size, the yolk sack. (That's the circle at the very center; it supports the fetus until the placenta is fully formed. The oblong to the left is the fetus.)

At a later date, I will probably give more details on what happened, how we found out, lessons learned from the struggles, and all the rest. But for right now I am just going to revel in the fuzzy little oblong.

I'm going to be a father. How cool is that?

Dog Blog

You are probably saying to yourself, "The worst part about Dan's writing block absence was that there have been no updates on Gracie." And I can see why you would say that, because she is an amazing dog.

Good news on all fronts with Gracie. She is calm enough now that we can leave her alone in the house for a few hours without her howling up a storm. She is marginally less hyper when she sees squirrels and cats. (This morning we saw three squirrels and she only barked once with no howling fits, for which I am sure the neighbors are extremely grateful.)


She did have one incident with our nieces Ali and Livia. After a few hours the girls proved to be too much for Gracie and she let Livia know it by placing her mouth over Livia's head; no biting just a warning. Livy got scared, but was otherwise fine. And we ended up being grateful that whatever ends up happening with us and children, we will not be adopting two energetic little ones at once.

Uncle Andrew

Quick note to mention the addition to the blog roll. Uncle Andrew is the site for my college friends Andrew and Margaret. There is a huge array of goodies on their site, so check it out. I highly recommend the Irony Supplement.

A couple of quick things

Now that the torture post is out of the way, I think I need to make up for lost time and get with the posting. So a few items that warrant your attention.

First, get well soon, Todd (and thank you for not infecting Trish or me), if for no other reason than the sanity of your wonderful fiancee.

Second, I really don't have a second but these things seem to work best in threes and I wanted to build up to the next one.

Third, final and most important, congratulations niece Madeline and nephew David. Madeline graduated this last weekend from Central Catholic High School in Portland. The whole family visited for the weekend to see her matriculate as well as to see if Rose Princess Madeline would be crowned Rose Queen. (Alas, no, but it went to one of her best friends of the group, so that's a plus.) She may not have won the crown, but she did snag a couple of scholarships and is heading to Seattle University this fall.

David graduates from All Saint's School today and is heading to Central Catholic himself this fall. (And David, good timing. Nothing is worse than being a Freshman in high school while a sibling is a Senior. Trust me on this one. And Tom, no "Gee, I don't remember that at all" comments on this one.) Turns out it is not just the family that thinks David is smart. One of his classes next fall will be Honors Geometry/Trigonometry. (I took regular old Trig as a Junior and never touched math again.) That is something you would expect an exceedingly geeky kid to take, but David didn't get any of his Uncle Dan's genes in that regard and is pretty damn cool. So I envision a scenario where David teaches all the geeky kids how to be cool by being comfortable with themselves and they teach David.... well, not math, because her clearly knows that, so I don't know what they teach David and since I cannot finish this little scenario I will distract you with a Real Genius clip as a cautionary note to David about studying too hard.

US and torture

The long silence on this blog is due almost entirely to feeling the need to write about the recent revelations on the U.S. torture program and not knowing how to do it.

As a recap, the Obama administration released four Justice Department memos authorizing the use of various torture techniques on U.S. held captives in Guantanamo Bay. The existence of the memos has been known for some time (the release was in response to a lawsuit), but the Bush administration refused to release them.

The memos are extremely difficult to read, mostly because of how clinical and detached the tone is in describing the techniques. I have given up trying to write about them, but Frank Rich of the New York Times has a good summation.

Since the release a few things have become clear. One is that there were people who opposed these actions, including an FBI interrogator who was able to get actionable intelligence from Khalid Sheik Mohammed in the first hour of a traditional interrogation. It has also become clear with the leak of a number of Justice Department e-mails that the "ticking time bomb" justification for these acts of torture is false.

Marcy Wheeler has a comprehensive torture timeline and Rachel Maddow has good summation as well.

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In a nutshell, the White House instituted a program of torture to try and find justifications for the war in Iraq and then tried to create the legal cover after the fact. There has been no credible evidence of any other reason for violating US and international law.

And now we are left with the question of what to do next. President Obama is taking no leadership on next steps and seems to be hoping it will go away. I get why. The Clinton impeachment hearings practically shut down all business in Washington. Those hearings would pale in comparison to torture hearings, and right now there are a enormous number of problems that need solutions quickly. But this gets to the core of the American system and it is not something where we can simply say it will never happen again. Without consequences for these actions, it will happen again, it is just a matter of when. Again, here is Frank Rich on transparency.

Plus, in addition to the torture, there are still prisoners missing. They are in U.S. custody somewhere, but we do not know where. It is deeply unlikely that they have had formal charges brought against them, access to lawyers or any type of court. This is what dictatorships do. In fact, this is what North Korea is doing right now. The only difference between North Korea detaining these journalists and the U.S. detaining the missing prisoners is that North Korea actually put on a sham trial and has announced an end date to their prison sentence.

And when the U.S. and North Korea can be seriously compared in the same breath, it is well past time to change our policies.

Once again,

what Trish said.

The thing about this (the elevated status of our conception struggles) is that it did not start out this way. Three years ago, when we first started trying, it did not change much of anything. I went and found a new job; Trish finished physical therapy for her wrist; we kept on pushing to create new film projects; we hung out with friends, went out to dinner and movies and generally just enjoyed our lives.

It was only as our efforts kept failing, that it started to grow in importance. And even then, it was in good ways at first. We ate more healthy foods, started buying organic products, etc. But more and more in crept into our lives in ways we did not expect and started taking up huge amounts of time, energy and money. Our social life dwindled rapidly, mostly because we were both so damn tried all of the time; creativity (at least for me) has fled; and grief would sneak up and grab us when we least expected it.

So vacation was great not just to get away from work and the weather, but to get out from under all of this, as well. But it was not long enough, so we are going to take a break this month as well. After that, maybe we will want to get back into it, maybe we will want to take a longer break, who knows. The whole point of the break is that we do not have to figure anything out during it. And we can re-discover the lives we had unwittingly set aside.