So cute.

This went on for a good 15 minutes.

What the heck is an OSHA?

Why yes, that is an powerful water pump being powered by two bare wires stuffed into an outlet. Best part: the outlets here have a locking mechanism, so i spent 2 minutes watching a guy jam a metal screwdriver into the outlet to overcome said lock. Now, in his defence, every socket has a switch, and it appeared to be off, but given the construction issues seen elsewhere in my villa, I wouldn't have done it for love or money,

For the grandparents

A typical evening with Henry.

Someone loves his binkie(s)

A Smattering of Photo-graphs to Inform and Delight.

God made Arrakis to test the faithful.


Yeah, I have no idea either. Cute, though.


G. E. Brothers (l) and H. Stockton Brothers (r), discussing world events and pacifier architecture. Note Henry was rocking the early 90s hair due to recently being exposed to EMF's "Unbelievable."


Henry, immediately after basic training.


My son, eating his Thanksgiving dinner today with a knife and fork. Bet you can guess what I am thankful for this year.

He climbed into the chair by himself.

Olde West Facial Hair

Shaving my beard in sections resulted in something awesome.

Braaaaaaains.......

Live and learn

During the month of Ramadan, muslims (even those who are not terribly devout) refrain from food, water, tobacco, and sex during the hours that the sun is up. Also expected to abstain are infidels working in muslim countries. So thid means in practice that if you eat, you have to hide in your office.

Now the fun part: gum is included in this. Its like being back in Chicora Elementary....no gum allowed. This will be very tough for me.

The holiday doesn't make a lot of sense, but most don't. Once, as I explained Easter in the US I was asked, "wait, so the rabbit was resurrected?"

From the "What the ..." File.

On the right hand side of my blog is an advertisement. Today, that banner is for "Scientology.org". I'd love to know what keyword in my blog made the google ad-bots decide readers of qataristry LOVE the L. Ron Hubbard.

Ramadan is coming.

First a cute Henry picture.

Next, Nicole and I are looking for a charity for Ramadan. We're not going native, but we haven't really given this year, so with the local focus on charity during the holy month, we though there was no better time than the present. Any suggestions?

What could possibly go wrong?

Wow.

This may be the snuggliest thing I have ever seen.

Quick Funny

So, Nicole and I were comparing childhoods tonight as we bathed Henry. I mentioned that as a small boy I had a beaver skull as a toy, which had been given to me by my Uncle Ron, a noted fur trapper. I then stated that I'd have to see if I could find it to give to Henry when he got a little older. It was at this moment that I noticed Nicole looking at me as if I were mad.

This happens perhaps more often than you would think. Apparently, many of my stories from childhood strike Nicole as a bit odd, although it usually would not occur to me that anything is weird until I tell the tale and see a reaction. This does not mean she is approving or disapproving, but rather she just notices that they are not common experiences. (For example, it never struck me as odd that my parents wouldn't let me sleep over at other kid's houses at 14, but would let me travel as a carnival worker at that age.)

We discussed it briefly, and I used the standard "but I grew up in small town PA" excuse, which Nicole countered with the (true) statement that she did as well. Nevertheless, I though a beaver skull was a reasonable toy and Nicole thought it should be part of the serial killer training set. I tried to explain this difference in background agreeably by noting:

"Yeah, but you grew up ethnic."

Bubbles bubbles bubbles

H. Stockton in his bubble hat.

The Forcefield.

So, people of different cultures smell different. Not bad, like "folks of nationality X smells awful" but rather people who consume different foods, use different soaps, and in general consume different cosmetics have different aromas. For example, in the northeast US during cold months African-Americans use more lotion to avoid becoming "ashy," and thus many have a lanolin smell due to their use of Vaseline Intensive Care and the like.

For a more concrete example: Westerners use colognes based on alcohol, whereas Arabs use colognes based in oil that smells spicier and heavier. (My wife and sister bought some, after convincing the clerk that they in fact were after the specific scent.) Thus if you get on an elevator in Qatar, you can tell whether a Western or Arabic women was the last in the elevator.

Separate from this is the issue of body odor. There are a number of cultures whose bathing practices are, well, more lax than those of the West, and thus in Qatar you will encounter folks who are neither Qatari nor Western who smell like gym socks. Not patchouli bad, but noticeably unwashed smelling.

One step beyond this are the forcefield guys. They are invariably men, and they smell TERRIBLE several paces away. When you see them in the malls, which are always very crowded, it is like they have a forcefield around them, such that the crowd parts and they have a 2 foot "no fly zone" around them. They have a forcefield of stank, which (if you are trapped in) should be the subject of a research project to weaponize. This is next year's NPRP grant. :)

Side note: I went to a dinner party tonight, and ran into a funny example of colloquial speech some Spanish speakers were discussing. The story was told that a kid was trying to say "I am very busy" but used the Colombian colloquial phrase which meant "Things are very tight," which heaven knows where they picked it up. This offended the kid's parents, as this phrase in Spain's Spanish means "I am making a lot of f*ck."

I love this kind of thing, because it calls to mind the following exchange:
"Are you very busy at work?"
"Yes, I am copulating a great deal."
"Juan, exactly what kind of physics department is that?"

Check this out.

Sometimes, simple is best.

Long time, no post.

Folks, sorry for the lack of recent posts. Here's some stuff for you, really briefly.

Have you ever been to Salt Lake City? If not, don't bother. Decent beer, clean air, but nothing super awesome. I went to the ACS meeting, and heard the following 100% true story, which is perhaps the most blatant example of arrogance among scientists I've ever heard. (And that takes some doing; scientists spend all their time trying to be right, which makes some of us into jerks.)

At a major American University, an Assistant Professor asked a Postdoc from another research group to go have cup of coffee with him. Both the Professor and the Postdoc work in computational chemistry, but not on the same projects/areas. Postdoc goes to the Professor's office, and the Professor says what he needs to talk about is too important to discuss there, so they go out to a coffee shop. At this point, the Postdoc is becoming a bit trepidatious. They get their coffee, and the Professor begins speaking. Basically, the Postdoc had recently begun a project that was related to or bordered on something the Professor considered his field. As gently as he could, the Professor told him to work on something else. If the Postdoc did not, this would lead to direct scientific competition between the two scientists. The Professor then states vis-a-vis this competition, "I will crush you." The best part is that the Professor honestly believed he was being nice, and truly helping a Postdoc avoid being shattered into a billion pieces by the sheer weight of the Professor's godlike intellect.

And now, the reason you read my blog, pictures of Henry.

We bought a bunch of blik stickers for Henry's room. They look really awesome.

Further proof H. Stockton's childhood will be a bit different than mine.


There are going to be literally dozens of pictures like this one by the time Henry starts school. Smiling, mustachioed Arab gentleman? Check. Semi-exotic background? Check. (In this case, the fabric souq.) Henry mugging for the camera? Check.

Also, a quick Henry story for you: Apparently children can grasp slapstick comedy at 9 months. Nicole was was standing up from the bed in Henry's room, slipped and then fell, landing directly on her rear end in a sitting position at the end of the bed. I was holding Henry, and we were looking in her directions. Before I could react, Henry burst out laughing. Great big guffaws of laughter. Neat, eh?

So Awesome!

The credit crisis, explained.


The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

This is Funny

From slashdot.org today, a comment on an article about a company that promises to control your babies hair color, eye color, etc. through gene manipulation:

'People already screen your embryos and sperm for certain genetic markers. It's not eugenics, it's called "dating."'

Enjoy!

So, where to begin? I've joined Facebook, which is something I was always hesitant about. A lot of things that are awesome about it, e.g. finding out whatever happened to old friends/acquaintances, are the things that are kind of depressing about it. I'm looking forward to see where it goes. Anyway, feel free to comment on anything here.

Today's post is going to be mostly pictures, as I am not feeling that clever/interesting.



It is a little known fact that if you are born in Texas, as Henry was, you are immediately issued a cowboy hat. Furthermore, if you are not photographed in the cowboy hat by your first birthday, you have to never again claim Texas as a homeland. The greatest shame is if you lose the hat; then you have to go live in a state with income tax.

Quick side comment: In Texas, at least when I lived there, the roads were awful, arguably because the government didn't take in enough funding to fix the roads due to the lack of state-wide income tax. However, in Pennsylvania, the roads have always been terrible, because the money taken in by state-wide income tax is burned away on everything other than actually accomplishing useful tasks. Based on this, what do the you thing the odds are of the new national stimulus package actually working?



MMMMM. Psghetti.



This building is on the edge of a park near our villa in Doha, Qatar. It is really creepy and ramshackle. In fact, it is the kind of place that the non-union Arabic equivalent of the Scooby gang would pull out a guy who had been trying to scare people away from the park for the big reveal:
"Look, it's Mr. Al-Manaker-Namaan!"
"Yes, and I would have got away with it if it weren't for you meddling kids, inshallah."



Nicole has gotten into knitting in a big way. The jacket that Henry is wearing in the preceding image is from her Fall line of active wear for tots on the go. Actually, the sweater is the first thing Nicole every made that wasn't a scarf, and came out beautifully.

This sign was placed at a round-about to encourage people to obey traffic lights. Note that rather than using the standard octagonal stop sign, they used a blood splatter, perhaps for dramatic effect. One has to wonder whether, in a culture where road signs, traffic laws, and common sense are all routinely ignored on the highway, one additional sign is really going to make a greater difference than say an actual enforcement effort. That said, the Qatar government is doing the best they can; the city of Doha has gone from Butler size to Pittsburgh size in 36 months and has double digit population increase every month, so a few traffic hiccups are to be expected.



The above is a picture of my favorite sign in Doha. "My Englishing places firstly!" You know, if you have a Chinese character tattoo, this may be what your skin says to people who can actually read the language.

Last thing: this YouTube video has cracked both Nicole and I up, and almost nothing hits both our funny, so check this out.

Prediction: Steelers 27, Cardinals 10

Look how excited everyone is that I am updating my blog!!



Below is the label on a can of John Smith's Extra Smooth. It either mean's "Don't drink while you're pregnant" or "Avoid chubby girls while drinking."



Again below, there is an image of H. Stockton and me. Please note that while H. Stockton considers boosterism for hoi polloi, he makes an exception for the Steelers.



No black baby clothes are available over here, and there is no NFL apparel, so Nicole made that shirt. From scratch. She cut up an old T-shirt of mine and sewed it into a shirt for Henry, then cross-stitched a handmade Steelers logo for the chest. He is also wearing gold pants and has a gold pacifier laynard.

Quick story for you. Every once in a while you are able to say something funny at the perfect moment, and that happened for me this weekend. I was playing cards, and one girl at the table mentioned that her boyfriend had opined during the AFC and NFC championships that, "Even if the Steelers lose, Pennsylvanians can root for the Eagles, as they are a PA team," inferring a certain lability of support by Pittsburghers. I immediately though of some folks I know back home, specifically my father-in-law, and pointed out that "The average Steeler's fan wouldn't root for the Eagles if it would save a kid with cancer from getting molested."

Higher resolution.

One of my resolutions for this year is more frequent posts to the blog; specifically, I'd like to publish something every Saturday this year. Later this week I am going to be sorting our photo collection¹ so the next update will be chock-a-block with pictures, but this entry will be mostly text. So, just some quick thoughts:

The Chinese government just released an official version of the Linux operating system, called "Red Flag." I kind of understand the name, as China has a (mostly) red flag and the national flag is being raised over computing. That said, I have to wonder if they know that a red flag is colloquially an indication of a problem, as in "The fact that Helen couldn't explain where she was the previous evening raised a red flag with her husband." It is sort of like naming your software "Unaccountable Credit Card Charges."

I think I am going to buy a Netbook. Anyone have any suggestions for which one? I want max battery life and the ability to run Skype.

January is going to be a monster. I have a new post-doc coming, my first, as well as teaching a 16 person section of physical chemistry and doing a two week class for high school students thinking about going to college for a technical education. The two week class is sort of a supplemental contract, i.e. I get paid extra for doing two hours of lecture per day for 10 days. This will be a lot of work and a lot of fun.

My buddy Mike got my son the following toy, which is so awesome: The arms and legs are the perfect size for Henry to chew, and he loves him. The toy is technically a wee ninja, although I like to tell people it is Middle-East Barbie.

(1) I tried to use Picasa to do this originally. It is the single dumbest gosh-dang piece of software ever constructed, as there is no way to tell it to not index EVERY PICTURE on the hard drive upon installation. I want it to index "My Pictures" and not (for example) the figures from every saved version of every paper I've ever written.