This article suggests scientific evidence for one of the potentially challenging premises of Non-violent Communication.

Altruism ‘in-built’ in humans from BBC News.

Posted by bruce as kids at 8:58 PM UTC

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Hello!

It seems like a life time ago since I got a Brock Wilson family update
out to you.

We have our December photos online now at http://photos.livingpixels.com/cc2005-december

Here’s some of what’s been happening for us.

Zeke and Cameron playing with snowshoes out front while
Daddy’s on the roof stringing holiday lights

Playing tickle and belly button booping with Grandma and Grandpa
Wilson who came before the holidays and parked their trailer in our
driveway for a month.

We have a miracle afternoon at the beach in Half Moon Bay before
cutting a Christmas tree. It was looking cold and grey on the drive
over and then when we got to the beach after a picnic lunch in the
greenhouse at Enso where Ryl does process painting on Monday nights,
it was warm enough to be in our t-shirts playing at the beach. We
enjoyed the dose of sunshine.

Grandma and boys were raking leaves instead of shoveling snow and
enjoying another warm afternoon.

Zeke was playing blues clues to find out where his big present for
Christmas was hiding. He got a batman bike and helped Grandpa and
Daddy put it together.

After spending most of the money Grandpa and Grandma Brock gave us for
a wagon on a train table and saying we wouldn’t use a wagon, we got a
wagon for Christmas with the money that was leftover and have been
enjoying it. Grandpa Wilson did a little engineering with it so it
doesn’t tip over when turning sharply to either direction. Thanks!

Christmas day and afterwards we were playing with tinker toys and the
new BBQ set. Miles was trying to fit into the barn and reading his new
books.

Grandpa and Grandma were contributing by fixing all the things on our
handyman’s todo list. We now have a new bathroom faucet downstairs that
young and old can operate without needing a lot of hand strength.

We are well and hoping that the holidays were full of wonderful
moments for you all.

-Ryl

Posted by bruce as kids at 11:57 PM UTC

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An interesting article on Brain Rot forwarded on by a friend after I complained about how annoying educational software is. I was referring to the setup hassles but now I’m starting to look at the actual educational value of the software themselves.

A nice quote:

Technology’s greatest contribution is to permit people to be incompetent at a larger and larger range of things.

Posted by bruce as (un)happy consumer, computing, kids at 6:16 PM UTC

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This morning Zeke told me that the Who’s in Whoville are sad when they wake up on Christmas morning because the Grinch takes their toys. Being somewhat alarmed that he missed the key message of the Grinch, we sat down and reviewed the scene when the Who’s wake up and start singing. Despite acknowledging that the Who’s have smiles on their faces, Zeke says they are sad because the Grinch took all their toys.

Maybe Zeke is really just saying that the Grinch movie is sentimental tripe and the reality is that the Who’s would be sad. We can’t fool him with this "true meaning of Christmas" crap. Or maybe not.

I’ll file this one in the "I really don’t know what’s going on in there" category.

Posted by bruce as kids at 3:36 PM UTC

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Whenever I get the measuring tape out, Zeke wants to measure himself. Tonight we noticed that Chuck E Cheese’s has a giraffe scale on the side of play structure.  

Zeke is 3 and a bit feet.

Miles is a bit over 2 and a half feet.

 Cool!

Posted by bruce as kids at 8:34 PM UTC

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We’ve been giving the boys raspberry kisses on the belly and Zeke’s been returning the favo(u)r for a while now. Tonight Miles did his version which is basically making a fart noise while facing my belly. Essentially he’s just spitting on my belly which produces the same result as a raspberry kiss — laughter!

Posted by bruce as kids at 9:08 PM UTC

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Miles was cracking me up by trying to blow on his pizza slice (to cool it down) like I had just done.

Later, the boys were captivated by me "drawing" stuff on them with those cool Crayola soap crayons. I drew letters, stripes (Zeke called them "power bands"), squiggles, overalls, muscles and (my fave) a smiley face with a belly button nose.

Posted by bruce as kids at 10:00 PM UTC

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I’ve been wanting a blog for a while now to capture:

• fun memories of the kids,
• notes on animated films I’ve seen, want to create, or am creating,
• trials and tribulations in the quest for the ultimate espresso,
• experiences and lessons related to building my physical vitality,
• observations of an unhappy or happy consumer,
• nerdly activities (struggles and successes) including TiVo hacking, and
• usability yeahs and boos.

I experimented with the more general Mambo CMS system but finally settled on WordPress because it’s really much more streamlined for blogging. I’ll be posting stuff in the past and will move this post back in time so it’s the first post so to be honest, the actual creation date of the blog was Nov. 16, 2005.

Posted by bruce as (un)happy consumer, animation, coffee, kids, usability, vitality at 12:23 PM UTC

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