Tagged: parenting

Reading Log 4.17.2026

As the influencers and their adoring trolls say these days, “Don’t sleep on those math essay titles!” This is the first volume of a four volume set on the World of Mathematics and I wanted to include the contents so that you can see for yourself just how far-reaching mathematics is. I especially call your attention to an essay near the end on “Mathematics in Painting”.

You see, years ago I stumbled upon the notion that not every math idea has always been around. Specifically, even the seemingly simple concept of the number zero is relatively new. As I explored and validated this notion, I came to read that even our literate ancestors had silly ideas about the size of the sun, some notable philosophers of old speculating that it is only twelve inches in diameter.

This wildly wrong guess called to my mind the fact that early art lacked what we call perspective. The curious question came to mind, “What exactly are we talking about here? When people saw paintings of nature or portraits of people, which we now would never suggest look anything like the landscape or person, did they think, ‘Nailed it!’?”

More pointedly, we can still do this today when we see a kid draw a terrible portrait of someone and it almost physically hurts to ask the kid the simple question, “Do you really think that scribbling looks like me?”

What gives? I wondered. Did their eyes work differently? Do my children’s eyes work differently.

Well, before ever starting this four volume set, I had speculated that the increase in art’s ability to capture life accurately was probably somehow related to the increase in mathematical knowledge. I said to myself that the obvious increase of both was not coincidental.

Long story short: it’s not just somehow related. It was mathematicians who moonlighted as artists (or vice versa) who, with their unique abilities, developed perspective in art!

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Upon starting Volume 3 of GW, I learned that it was actually a five volume biography by Mr. Irving that I had begun. Luckily eBay exists and I was able to track down the final two volumes before they vanished forever. I also have picked up a post-Revolutionary War map from which to teach my children (and any houseguests) the striking fact of how small a part of America was even involved in our infamous Independence-giving war.

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Aquinas is simply the most methodical writer you will ever come across. You owe it to yourself to peruse at least one chapter.

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Snodgrass is someone I learned about while reading Meier’s fifth volume of his Marginal Jew series (also on Jesus’ parables). Suffice it to say, I now have a decent depth to my understanding of Jesus’ parables. All I can offer in brief is, “Please do not loft an opinion or interpretation of a parable’s meaning until you read at least one book on them.” Either Meier or Snodgrass is a fine place to start. (Blomberg too.)

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Sherlock Holmes author Sir Doyle wrote a fun little classic knights-in-shining-armor adventure tale in The White Company. Best part is a reminder that once we did things for glory. And it also has some super funny banter among knights.

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And for fun (and more simply to be forthright) I have included the two bedtime story books I have recently completed with my children. These two have a few great moments apiece, but in moving to Farmer Boy, I have to say FB seems to have a much more compelling plot, what with the whole new teacher being the friend of previous teacher who was essentially murdered.

My sister had the yellow colored box set of these on her shelf all my childhood. I stared and stared and thought they were for girls only—like there was no way a boy could enjoy them. Ha. So stupid.

They Do Not Conceal Like I Would

It is surprising to me, and seems to surprise most of us, that the bad guys self-identify so strongly.

I am currently reading GW’s biography. There have been parallels to today which are difficult to ignore, even as they aren’t 1:1. For example, I have to admit that had I been British back then, I would probably have been surprised that the colonists were so blatantly identifying as enemies. I would have thought, “Don’t they understand who they are up against? Maintaining neutrality, even as a feint, seems the stronger play.”

But no. When a fight is brewing, the two sides declare themselves.

I think the matter can be put plainly: When you’re on the side of those with the guns, it is surprising that the people without the guns would fight you—but it shouldn’t be.

These contemporary secessionists in Portland, Minnesota, and elsewhere have not yet declared independence. I would say, on most levels, they are miles away from being organized in any sense like those who declared independence back on July 4, 1776. But I will not be teaching my kids that it is surprising that stupid people unabashedly announce the side they’re on.

We, The “Idiot Savants”

One delightful aspect that accompanies the hobby of reading that I did not expect when I began to read could best be called “following my whims”. In my case, I wanted to be a bit methodical, so I began with a couple sets of liberal education type books (AKA classical education), filled with essays by great and influential writers. (Keep in mind, this “began with” is after master’s level coursework, age 35ish). The editors of these sets would have pleasant introductions which included “for more on this topic” recommendations. And ebay supplied the steady-stream of follow-on books at minimal cost.

Math History is my main “whim” of late. This is because I have a belief that “there is no math in the Bible” and want to be able to explain the importance of my claim eloquently.

After you read Math History for long enough, to the point of being half-way through the first of four volumes of The World of Mathematics, you find essays on “Idiot Savants”.

Here I want to say I have provided enough information to not need to explain what “Idiot Savants” are, but to be clear, we are talking about people—a very, very few in number—who can perform, say, 10 digit by 10 digit multiplication problems in their head. The interesting part is that this ability has no apparent correlation to life skills or general wisdom or even other talents, professional or otherwise. IE, most jarring, even these “Idiot Savants” can be not good at math in the complete sense. In a word, to modern man, they are perplexing. Just what exactly is their “skill” or “talent”?

The above picture of the plate is something I took in a downtown toy store, one of the last holdouts of its kind, in my city. There are a couple of problems with it; can you spot them?

  1. If a kid can’t eat, a kid can’t read.
  2. If a kid can’t put food in his mouth, a kid isn’t hungry.
  3. Eating does not require plates.
  4. If a kid can’t distinguish plate from table (as manifested by their inability to keep the food on the plate and off the table), then they certainly aren’t able to distinguish individual sections within one (1) plate.
  5. Some forks, especially kid-sized, have three prongs.
  6. Lastly, and this may be picky, but if you’re going to put dinosaurs on a baby plate, I think the least you could do is label them with their names, followed by phonetic spelling. How else will the child learn?!

Faithful Readers, there is a big world out there. If your world is small, in other words, if you feel like you’re really close to finally being fully tooled and comfortable at, this, our problem-riddled life, then I challenge you to consider if you are, in fact, an idiot.

Just Feel Like Doting On My Son and His Father

He’s down in the family room, riding a wooden rocking horse around the room. In his hand is a stuffed “stick” which is part of a marshmallow roasting stuffed toy. He doesn’t think it’s a stick, though. It is a rifle.

Oh. And don’t forget the Christmas tree and other seasonal decorations. And a giant grizzly bear, lovingly known as “Papa Bear”. And a toy helicopter that over 2 ft long!

Want to know how you too can reproduce this scene in 2025? It’s easy: no tv!

Happy Thanksgiving! And Merry Christmas!

On Our National Foundation

It’s not quite the season for weather-induced late starts or snow-days, but it’s close. This morning I received the text alert that a power outage in the neighborhood resulted in the kids’ school deciding to run their delayed start schedule on the hope that power will be restored by then. Immediately my mind went to, “How do other parents deal with this?”

My life is such that either mom or dad is 100% available, entirely stay-at-home every single day of the kids’ lives. But from what I understand, this home scenario is more and more rare, if not the literal exception that proves the rule. So what are the other moms and dads doing when their entire day gets disrupted by a random power-outage? Are they taking PTO for a couple hours? Are they bringing their kids to work and then taking an early lunch to take them to school? Do families have plans with other families for these days, ie, drop the kids at some stay-at-homer’s house and this stay-at-home friend loads all the kids up at the appropriate time?

I have no idea.

But I do know that this is probably the strongest example of why being a stay-at-home mom (extreme cases it can be the dad) matters. The kids, the future-citizens of America, need to understand the concept of stability.

Civilizational stability, national stability, community stability is not intuitive like “water is wet” is intuitive. We humans need to witness the example of stability. It is entirely possible, see all the places of the planet that you couldn’t be paid to visit, for humans to never understand that there is a better way to live, that there is a stable way to live. Of course it involves rule of law, literacy, guns, and effort etc. But at its foundation, it involves stability. The stay-at-home mom provides this. And the exemplar experience is the completely thought-free way in which a late start or cancelled school day is handled.

Using Nebraska-Corn-Fed Boobies in 2025 and Beyond

This is mostly intended to entertain international readers who find themselves daily longing for Americana. But the wisdom herein is universal just the same.

I grew up in the suburbs of Kansas City, KS. Picture an endless, rolling sea of clothesline-less backyards in neighborhoods of single-family homes. Try and imagine that the size of the houses and yards grows proportionately to their distance from the city. Got it? Good. That should give you some idea of it.

Our perspective on girls was probably exactly that of any group of boys anywhere on earth. There were hot ones, “doable” ones, and ugly ones. Also similar to any group of boys, these designations were perfectly harmless as no boy was actually going to approach a girl, no matter her place on our assessment.

After highschool came college. I chose to go to a small, private college in a small town of the neighboring state of Missouri. This was the first time I heard the description “townie” as applied to the citizens of that small town. These townies were, as expected, totally different than us college kids. It was fascinating to me. Also fascinating was how the girl situation suddenly changed and its vocabulary too. It was here that kids from all the across the midwest and bread-belt of America gathered, mostly on-scholarship, and it was here that I first noticed, what I quickly learned were colloquially known to rural boys as, “Nebraska-corn-fed boobies”.

The concept at once made me chuckle. My mind was flooded with questions. Was such a thing really possible? If so, why did Nebraska’s corn, in particular, produce big boobs? Why had I not heard this before? How many other people knew? Why wasn’t Nebraska’s population booming? Was Nebraska’s population booming? What else about our world do I not know?!

Okay, hook over—expect a return of concept. But here comes the wisdom.

About two years ago, as I discussed the merits of homeschooling with my brother and his wife, I noticed something that I hadn’t before noticed. They continually shot down every benefit of homeschooling, while also agreeing that the weaknesses of public school I identified were real. Finally, and proudly, I said what I thought was the fairest thing I could, being, “Here’s the thing. You’re sniping everything I say, but you haven’t made one positive claim. I know what you’re against, now I want to hear what you are for.”

That was the last line and last conversation on the matter. I still have no idea what they would do with their kids, which, as should be expected, is moot because they don’t want kids anyhow.

The other day, Scott Jennings was doing his thing, the topic being the No Kings events. He said the exact same thing to his co-panelist. “Okay. But what are you for?”

This is very sad to me. It is sad because I believe we, those in the right, should be able to make a dent during conversations. If we can’t make a dent, then the new question and problem is, “Why even try?”

So when I listen to the current, only critical mind-set of the Left, I would say that it can be fairly summarized in some relevant sense by, “DJT is the source of all my problems.”

In my most empathetic attempt at understanding them, I say to myself, “Just give them this as a fact”. So I do.

I concede, not just for argument’s sake, that it is gospel truth that Donald J. Trump is the source of all their problems.

There.

I said it.

Truth be told, it wasn’t as hard as I expected.

Okay. What happens next?

Because while Trump is the source of all your problems, Donald J. Trump is not the source of all my problems.

And this is where “Nebraska-corn-fed boobies” re-enter the picture.

Like Archimedes, Newton, and Gauss before us, we have two sides of an equation in apparent inequality. Who among us can find the missing variable?

Symbolically, we can write [DJT➡️p] ~ [DJT,p] = 1.

Spelled out, “IF -Trump-THEN-I-have-problems is relationally equivalent to Trump-unrelated-to-problems EQUALS UNITY”.

Put plainly, how can one person, one man, simultaneously be and not be the source of problems?

I submit to you that the variable is Nebraska-corn.

Now, you might be tempted to generalize and say, “I think I see. You’re saying, Pete, that the variable is ‘internal’ to the person—nurture, though, not nature. Something like ‘the way someone is raised inescapably equips them for life, and these people for whom Trump is the source of their problems weren’t raised right’, correct?”

No, I mean Nebraska-corn. 😘

Yesterday Was A Good Day

Took A- and J- on probably their longest hike and highest summit yet (4.2 miles/8000’). Sausage, cheese, crackers, and a cutie at the top.

Stopped at Crumbl for cookies on drive home.

Watched Starship 11 test flight (success).

Ate at Freddy’s.

Traditional Archery club at night, before driving in to work.

One Set of Lyrics to Newsies’ “Carrying the Banner”

“We need a good assassination
We need an earthquake or a war
How ’bout a crooked politician?
Hey stupid, that ain’t news no more”

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The young kids were taking so long to eat dinner that I three on this oldie but goodie soundtrack from childhood in the hopes of keeping my sanity.

One Macro-Scale Reason Charlie Kirk Was Killed

Check this paragraph out. It is from Robert Shaplen’s New Yorker article “Life in Saigon: Spring 1972 We Have Always Survived”, April 15, 1972.

There is no need to complete the paragraph. You get the point.

This was 1972. This was the behavior of the “good guys”. This was conducted in essentially a third world, war torn country, without computers.

I don’t know about you, but I am astounded by the (new to me) information therein.

So I want to ask you: What do you want, my fellow Americans? Do you want to continue to feign outrage at the Left and its lunatic adherents and make wild claims about a coming civil war? Do you want to teach each other that there must be a response, even if it is simply at the polls? Do you want to appear totally shocked by the fact that someone who wasn’t a threat to anyone was assassinated? Do you want to task Tan’s special police to find the next lunatics?

What do you want?

I’ll tell you what I want. I want to be left alone. I want to have a private life. I want my thoughts about, my opinions about, and mostly my actions while living life on this third rock from the materials fusion process we call “the sun” to be officially unknown to any government entity.

Will you give me what I want?

Because of my desire for privacy, I am not particularly concerned about the Left and their lunatic adherents. Because of my desire for privacy, I am not particularly interested in pontificating about the meaning of assassinations. And I am not particularly surprised that harmless people are murdered.

In place of these concerns, I am particularly concerned that my kids grow up understanding that while there might be a way of life which tries to prevent assassinations (or keep the peace in general), that way will never be the way to live life. Practically, then, this means that I spend time preparing to teach them the history of the Vietnam War. Will you join me?

Two Updates on the Boy Child

First, during my attempt to get more of the cookie for myself, when I told him that the cookie was very big, J- innocently said, “My mouth is big!”

Second, we have this game Poop Tracks which is actually a pretty fantastic board game for little kids (if you care to have them turn into Tom Brown Jr.-like trackers). You spin a spinner and do what it says. The options are, “Draw 1 (or 2), Trade, Swipe, or Skip.” Naturally, I take it upon myself to teach my progeny the proper way to trade and swipe. And, naturally, the proper way to swipe is through distraction. So my kids now look forward to the spinner landing on “swipe” so they can say, “Look at that, Dad!” before proceeding to take one if my cards. Well, just now, as J- and I (A- is now in kindergarten 😦 ) were having a donut, he says, “Look out the window, Day-ad!” Obviously he was priming me for the take, but for what? I played along and then he swiped my napkin. What a guy!