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How Fatherhood Affects The Body and The Brain

I'm not a big fan of the Hallmark holidays – those ones that you just know were made up at some point in the past, mainly to sell greeting cards.  But anyhow, happy first Father's Day to me!

Most of us know the ways that parenthood affects mothers.  But in keeping with the theme of the day, here's an article from Slate magazine outlining some new findings about how parenthood affects fathers (er, if you're a marmoset):

There's also preliminary but tantalizing evidence that fatherhood can change the brain. A 2006 study
found enhancements in the prefrontal cortex of the father marmoset.
After childbirth, the neurons in this region showed greater
connectivity, suggesting that having young children could boost the
part of the brain responsible for planning and memory, skills parents
need when having kids gives them more to keep track of. The neurons
also had more receptors for vasopressin, a hormone that has been shown
to prompt animal fathers to bond with offspring. (Receiving an
injection of vasopressin, for instance, prompts a male prairie vole to
cuddle and groom a youngster.)

(Thanks to Heather M. for the pointer to this article)

Posted 17 June 2007 § Baby § Main Page ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged:

Smaller: The Story of the Disposable Diaper (The Perfect Innovation) – Malcolm Gladwell

Doing my third diaper change of the morning reminded me of this excellent Malcolm Gladwell article I read a year or two ago.  In it, he looks at the history of disposable diapers, their science and the impact various elements have had on the economic aspects of the product. 

Shea and I did the cloth v. disposable debate and like all good neo-hippies of the world, we were going to go with cloth.  But someone (Quinn?  Ian?) showing me a Wired article about how each is equally bad for the environment (PDF) in its own way along with the extra complications of trying to do cloth while maintaining two separate households, tilted the pointer towards convenience. 

Posted 16 June 2007 § Baby § Main Page ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged:

Friday Late Link – Public Library Does Away With Dewey (Fri June 15, 2007)

I had this ready to go yesterday but never got near a computer to post it.  So I'm backdating to Friday and life goes on…

“The Prelinger Library is a small privately owned “public library” in San Francisco with the unique philosophy
that browsing library stacks can reveal new knowledge, if the books are
arranged for browsing. This is counter to most public libraries who
rely on computer terminal searching, databases and the Dewey Decimal
system to atomize books and subjects, with stack browsing a sort of
random after effect. Now a (real) public library in Arizona has joined the revolution
and claims to be the first public library in the nation to drop the
Dewey Decimal system. Instead, books will be shelved by topic, similar
to the way bookstores arrange books. The demise of the century-old
Dewey Decimal system is overdue, county librarians say: “People think
of books by subject. Very few people say, ‘Oh, I know Dewey by heart.’
“”

(via MetaFilter which has some great discussion about the role of classification systems in libraries and bookstores)

Posted 16 June 2007 § FridayFunLink § Library § Main Page ‡ Comments (5) °

Good Web Sites About…Designing Web Sites

I can't remember if I ever mentioned it on this blog (probably knowing me) but I'm currently volunteering on the web site redesign task force of the Canadian Library Association. 

For tomorrow's telefconference, everybody was asked to submit a link to a web site whose navigation they thought worked well.  Some people did, others simply gave lists of what elements they liked (and didn't like) and since I agreed with most of what was already said, I sent the list of sites below instead. 

So, two questions for anybody who's out there:
1) is there a library and/or organizational web site whose look/navigation you particularly enjoy or that works really well?
2) are there any sites you like that have good tips about web site design?  Or any personal preferences for things you like (and don't like?)

—
Hi all,

Rather than chime in and repeat a lot of what's been said already (and which I agree with for the most part), I'll point you to a few sites you may or may not have seen before.  I know most people won't have time to peruse these by tomorrow but they might be useful to look at as this process moves forward. 

Web Pages That Suck
– has a good checklist of things to watch out for when designing a site.  Ironically, their site design is horrible (or maybe that's intentional?)

Jakob Neilsen's Top 10 Web Design Mistakes
– an annual list of the worst trends/ongoing errors in web design.  Highly worth reading and featuring lots of other Top 10 lists for other years and specific topics. 

The book “Don't Make Me Think” is great.  The web site?  Not so much…

Finally, a Google search for “Best Library Web Site” led to this best practices wiki

Cheers all – talk to you tomorrow!

Jason

Posted 14 June 2007 § Internet § List § Main Page ‡ Comments (0) °

The Birth Order of Children

We were talking about having multiple children today at coffee break (“I think Shea and I want to survive this one before we decide that” was my take) and a co-worker mentioned this e-mail which she forwarded to me.  Too true.  

The Birth Order of Children


Your Clothes
1st baby: You begin wearing maternity clothes as soon as your OB/GYN confirms
your pregnancy.
2nd baby: You wear your regular clothes for as long as possible.
3rd baby Your maternity clothes ARE your regular clothes.

Preparing For Birth
1st baby: You practice your breathing religiously.
2nd baby: You don't bother because you remember that last time, breathing didn't
do a thing.
3rd baby: You ask for an epidural in your eighth month.

The Layette
1st baby: You pre-wash newborn's clothes, colour-coordinate them, and fold them
neatly in the baby's little bureau.
2nd baby: You check to make sure that the clothes are clean and discard only the
ones with the darkest stains.
3rd baby: Boys can wear pink, can't they?

Worries
1st baby: At the first sign of distress – a whimper, a frown – you pick up the
baby.
2nd baby: You pick the baby up when her wails threaten to wake your firstborn.
3rd baby: You teach your three-year-old how to rewind the mechanical swing.

Pacifier
1st baby: If the pacifier falls on the floor, you put it away until you can go
home and wash and boil it.
2nd baby: When the pacifier falls on the floor, you squirt it off with some
juice from the baby's bottle.
3rd baby: You wipe it off on your shirt and pop it back in.

Diapering
1st baby: You change your baby's diapers every hour, whether they need it or
not.
2nd baby: You change his diaper every two to three hours, if needed.
3rd baby: You try to change his diaper before others start to complain about the
smell or you see it sagging to his knees.

Activities
1st baby: You take your infant to Baby Gymnastics, Baby Swing, and Baby Story
Hour.
2nd baby: You take your infant to Baby Gymnastics.
3rd baby: You take your infant to the supermarket and the dry cleaner.

Going Out
1st baby: The first time you leave your baby with a sitter, you call home five
times.
2nd baby: Just before you walk out the door, you remember to leave a number
where you can be reached.
3rd baby: You leave instructions for the sitter to call only if she sees blood.

At Home
1st baby: You spend a good bit of every day just gazing at the baby.
2nd baby: You spend a bit of everyday watching to be sure your older child isn't
squeezing, poking, or hitting the baby.
3rd baby: You spend a little bit of every day hiding from the children.

Swallowing Coins
1st child: When first child swallows a coin, you rush the child to the hospital
and demand x-rays.
2nd child: When second child swallows a coin, you carefully watch for the coin
to pass.
3rd child: When third child swallows a coin you deduct it from his allowance.

Posted 13 June 2007 § Baby § Humour § List § Main Page ‡ Comments (0) °

So I Was Sitting In the Dentist's Chair…

…and what better time for letting your mind wander far FAR away?  If a couple recent posts were “link dumps”, consider this one a “mind dump” as I sit at home waiting on a few things before I head back to Weyburn after a quick trip into the city.  (Hmm, one thing that didn't factor into my choice of jobs was $1.15/litre fuel and more frequent than expected trips for doctors, dentists and all kinds of other appointments and obligations.  Oh well – it's only money, right?) 

– flipping through the channels (ceiling TV = best dental technology improvement of all-time), I happened upon my former boss' acceptance speech for the Arts category at the YWCA's Women of Distinction Awards being replayed on local cable.  Couldn't have gone to a better choice.  Congrats Brenda!

– we have Bell satellite at home but the other reason I like local cable is for the real estate channel.  I cannot believe how much real estate has gone up in Regina in the past few years – 19.4% in the last year alone which I believe leads the country.  If we didn't need to find another place to live, we'd sell our house tomorrow! 

– I spent most of the afternoon today buying books for our library system.  Life is good. 

– in a weird way, my laptop dying couldn't have happened at a better time.  I get to focus on Shea and Pace without the distraction of that shiny blinking box always at arm's reach.  (Er, not that I wouldn't have otherwise, of course! )

– I think I'll pick up some Lang's Vietnamese food for supper on the road home – even though my mouth still isn't working yet.  It's soooo good (the food, not when my mouth doesn't work.)  

– I am having a very honest debate with myself right now about having a quick nap before heading back to Weyburn or getting on the road ASAP.  Guess what?  Baby wins…I'm outta here!

Posted 13 June 2007 § Main Page § Randomness ‡ Comments (0) °

How Mainstream is Your Musical Taste?

I am…26.58 % mainstream in my musical listening habits. Kinda surprising – I would've guessed I was about 80% mainstream.  Actually I probably am 80% mainstream if this site could look at my CD collection.  But my online music listening habits (which are tracked by last.fm and which is where these stats are drawn from) are probably a lot more focussed on new bands that I hear about online.   And if I'm honest, I'm a bit more conscious that by streaming what I'm listening to to this blog, I'm helping create a virtual representation of myself.  So on my computer, I listen to hipster cred bands like Wilco, obscure singer-songwriters like Sam Baker and trendy but perhaps not yet broken newcomers like Lily Allen.  Meanwhile, at home in the CD player, it's all Spice Girls, all the time! 

[Edit: Except I just looked at the last.fm sidebar and realised that Anne Murray's “Could I Have This Dance” has been sitting there for about a week.  Embarrassing but it played at my grandpa's funeral so I wanted to hear it again when I got home.  No shame in that!  What'd we learn in 503?  Never apologize for your reading habits.  I guess the same should apply to your music listening habits.  Unless you like Nickelback.  There really is no excuse for that! ]

Posted 11 June 2007 § Main Page § PopCulture ‡ Comments (4) ° Tagged:

Link Dump Redux

So after saying a couple entries ago that I never do link dump posts, here I am doing another one.  Maybe I should give in and make this a recurring feature on the blog, just like the Friday Fun Links?  Heck, I could have a whole week's worth of features and never have to come up with an original thought again!

Sunday Photo of the Day (Flickr or From My Own Collection)
MetaFilter Mondays
YouTubesday
Wikipedia Wednesday
Thursday Download of the Day
Friday Fun Link
Saturday Link Dump o' The Week

Or maybe that would be incredibly dumb.

But anyhow, (seeing as it's Saturday) here's a few more link dumps for you…

“OMG! My mom joined Facebook” – NYTimes
Facebook's recent facelift (ha!) is deeper than I initially realised.  All those new widgets you can add to your profile are a big step in Facebook's attempt to become a “social operating system“.  They don't want to be bought out by Google or Microsoft – they apparently want to *be* Google or Microsoft.  This could get interesting!

“More Advice College Graduates Don't Want To Hear” – NYTimes
Lots of good tidbits here – I'm a big fan of “pay yourself first” along with “pay yourself 10% of everything you make” having read “The Wealthy Barber” while still in high school.  The sooner you start saving, the better off you'll be in the long term.  Chris Graves has a link to a site that explains compound interest in a very straight-forward manner.  How do you save 10% when you're young and not making much or paying off student loans or whatever?  It's hard but not impossible.  Set up an arrangement with your RRSP company (you do have an RRSP, right?) to automatically withdraw 10% from each paycheque (or from your student loans even!) and adjust your spending accordingly.  Don't buy Starbucks.  Don't buy smokes.  Don't buy booze, shoes or a CD of the blues if it means you won't be able to save that initial 10% every month. 

Man, I have lots more to say on this – this should be a full post sometime (why do I have a memory that I already linked to Chris Graves' post on compound interest?  It's taken a year but more and more, I feel like I'm repeating myself on this blog.)

LIS757 Delicious Links Page
This semester's social networking class at FIMS has a page where students are required to submit links to stories about various aspects of Web 2.0.  Lots of good browsing here!  (Bonus to the person who can identify which submission here is a link back to my blog.  Since Delicious only shows titles, not URL's, I'd have to scan through all of them to find out which person linked back to me – which is how I found this page initially.)

The Loneliness of the Conservative Librarian
“When David Brooks did some research into political donations by profession for his September 11, 2004, column in The New York Times,
he found that for librarians “the ratio of Kerry to Bush donations was
a whopping 223 to 1.” By contrast, the corresponding ratio for
academics was 11 to 1. As one of those rarest of beasts, a conservative
librarian, I can attest firsthand to the stifling left-wing orthodoxy
of modern American librarianship.”

Another anecdote which I think I've told before… I was walking out of our first day orientation and ended up walking beside Quinn (though I didn't know he was Quinn just yet!) and he noted that he'd recently read an article about how librarianship was the most left-wing, progressive profession by far.  I was like “yeah, and…” Anyhow, that's a thought that's been going through my head lately – looking at Facebook profiles of colleagues who are brave (stupid?) enough to note their political and religious beliefs (not that these two are linked – I know there are progressive religious people and there are conservative ones.) 

Anybody looking for an RQ challenge?  Do a search for any studies of the political leanings of librarians.  Or use the Political Compass quiz and Survey Monkey to do an informal study on your blog.  (I'd do these things but time does not actually exist for me right now!)  Or do a full-fledged independent study at FIMS next term and send me the results!

Here's my results by the way:

Your political compass

Economic Left/Right: -8.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.74

Posted 09 June 2007 § Main Page § Photo § Politics ‡ Comments (2) °

Friday Fun Link – Librarians As The Enemies of Books (June 6, 2007)

A bookseller writes in Library Quarterly about how librarians are the enemies of books – marking them up with tape, stamps and glue, getting rid of unwanted and obsolete books and so on.

(Oh, and it’s an article written in 1937. Have things changed or are librarians still responsible for “ruining” books?)

(via MetaFilter)

Posted 09 June 2007 § FridayFunLink § Library § Main Page ‡ Comments (0) °

Why Raising Babies Is Like Making Bread (And Thoughts On Why I Blog Daily)

Jill has a really nice post about being a parent that resonated as Shea and I head towards our son's first month on this planet (and after dad's first week back in the office.)

Michelle also admits to some amount of shame at her lack of blogosity in comparison to my almost-daily-posting track record, especially with a new job, a new baby, and no computer (not quite true – no laptop but I still have access to a desktop pretty much everywhere I am – so a bit more inconvenient but not too bad.)  

Anyhow, a few people have asked me since I started this blog how I'm able to post so regularly.  So I thought I'd try to answer that now. 

The first element is that I've kept a personal journal (my small town roots won't allow me to refer to it as a diary – those are for girls! ) since 1991 during my first year of University.  I've always been a wannabe writer and had made various attempts at keeping a journal since probably the day after I learned to write.  But they never stuck until, perhaps unsurprisingly, I got my first computer.  The advantages of keeping the journal electronically – searchability, security, automation of some things like the time stamp I use for every entry- helped me to make writing in the journal a habit that I've never stopped.  (I think I read somewhere that you need to do something 20 or so times in a row for it to be a habit.  So less than a month of daily posts – in your personal journal or on your blog or for anything else – going to the gym, going to bed early, whatever it is – and you should be on your way.  Of course, how they figure this out so precisely is the bigger question!)

Getting back on topic – knowing I would have to write regularly to make the journal a habit, I decided to aim for a daily entry knowing that a weekly time frame gave too much chance to let it slide.  In the end, my entries weren't necessarily daily but as often as I had time or reason to write.  Some are one line long, some are pages in length.  I would say that since 1991, I've written 10 000 single spaced pages worth of entries.  Of course, I'll never go back and re-read everything but it's nice to be able to go back and, like looking at photo albums, have moments and memories come back to me – either when I'm trying to remember specific details or just browsing randomly. 

So when I started my blog, it was a fairly easy transition to doing regular, frequent posts here also.  And much like my journal, sometimes I'd go for a few days without
writing on my blog while other days would see half a dozen entries or more.

Finally, I think I've developed a few tricks to make daily blogging easier – I bookmark interesting links as I come to them so I always have something to talk about, I try to visit a few aggregators such as MetaFilter and Reddit on a daily basis which provide lots of potential links/topics for discussion.  Things like photos and embedded YouTube videos are easy “cheats” on days when I don't have anything to discuss but still feel obligated to post. 

I've also built up an archive of maybe 20-30 draft posts that could turn into full fledged blog entries at any time.  Pending topics range from long-buried subjects like “10 Things I Learned In Library School (Honest)” to a more recent idea to write about “Why Saskatchewan Is The Most Canadian of Provinces” to a list of useful library employment web sites (including RSS feed links for those that don't already have them courtesy of Ponyfish.

So anyhow, there you go – an explanation of how (and why?) I do daily (give or take) blog posts.  Oh, and the biggest irony?  Since starting this blog, my personal journal has gone from daily posts to closer to weekly ones! 

Posted 08 June 2007 § Baby § Blog § Main Page ‡ Comments (1) °