Fun with Mom

It took 1.5 hours to eat lunch -- my mom carefully cuts up five different kinds of fruit and veggies (with a total mass of less than one whole apple) and nibbles at them. Then there's soup and crackers with peanut butter. Then 15 minutes brushing her teeth.

Finally we leave (15 minutes late) for a short shopping trip to Target. Now we have to get back in less than 45 minutes, since we're expecting a furniture delivery at 2:30. Hard to keep her from wandering off to look at things. We get out of the store and get home just in time.

An hour later: no furniture. Paul's glorious maple bookshelves are no-shows.

I've shown her the Tivo but it seems beyond her ability to operate, and when she accidentally pushes buttons on the media controller, the system goes into a state she has no ability to get out of, so she misses the rest of whatever she was watching. She's brought the manual for her VCR, which has somehow gotten into a state where it records all programs in Spanish. I point out where it shows you how to reset the system to factory settings, and she says she tried that but nothing happened. Meanwhile, her PC has so much spyware on it it's unusable, and I can't walk her through installing antispyware stuff at a distance without losing the rest of my hair in frustration.

Off to the gym, where people leave me alone and I can focus. :-)

Ex Mike will take her to lunch Tuesday and then on a light shopping trip. Monday we've reserved a seat on the casino bus for her. And I'll have plenty of time with her in the odd hours, plus this weekend's activities.

David Gelernter

The author of this piece is more famous for surviving an attack by the Unabomber than his work in computer science and virtual environments. But he knows where the new tide of ideologically-based ignorance is leading us. Teaching children "correct" attitudes instead of history and the tools of thought to interpret it is destroying our ability to make reasonable judgments as a democracy.

Here's what happened to him for daring to create new technology:

In 1993, Yale computer science professor David Gelernter opened what he thought was an unsolicited doctoral dissertation. It exploded, destroying his right hand and eye and making his torso resemble a construction site. Gelernter, bleeding and "royally annoyed," walked to the local hospital. His blood pressure zero, surgeons barely saved his life.

Still no bookshelves.