Slate’s Meghan O’Rourke has an interesting article on men who are sexually traumatized by watching women give birth.
O’Rourke writes:

Today’s women . . . see having the father in the delivery room as a necessary component of a healthy marriage, one in which both partners contribute equally to collective partnership. This is an absolutely reasonable request: Childbirth is scary and painful, and it makes sense to have reassurance and help from the person you’re closest to (and your child’s father). But the belief that men should be on duty no matter what assumes on some level that sex is just like all the other functions that the body performs. What the experience of the men in the therapist’s article suggests is that, for at least some, this isn’t true; for some, the erotic depends on maintaining a distinction between the sexual and the reproductive.

To the traumatized men, but also to some of these women, I say: it’s not all about you!

I’m happy to report that I scored 90% on this eighth grade math test. And I only got the one question wrong due to an incorrect calculation, not because I didn’t know how to figure the answer (not that an eighth grade math teacher would care much about the reason).

Gordon Atkinson has a blog post today about a salesman who cold-called him, trying to sell him address lists to use to solicit new members for his congregation. Gordon makes a compelling argument that his small congregation is just the right size. I see his point, and generally, I agree with him that it’s wrong to equate a congregation’s growth with its success, as so many churches do these days.
But I don’t think that marketing should be a taboo topic for churches. Inviting people into the fold is, after all, one way of spreading the Good News. The point should be, however, that there are many ways to spread said Good News, and counting heads in worship is just one small method among many, and, in my view, a more trivial one.

Sucker, that is…
This morning, I walked the kids to school. Well, Hannah usually walks ahead with her friends and I accompany Samuel. A small crowd of moms and kids was gathered next to the school building as Samuel and I neared. We saw a young cat emerging from the downspout and a mom trying to help it without touching it.
I reached down and scooped up the cat. The woman looked at me and said, “Your daughter was just here. She said that you would pick it up.” I carried the kitten around the school while I dropped Samuel off, took it home and set it up in the spare dog cage. We’ll decide what to do with it this evening.

Sorry I haven’t blogged much lately. Two reasons, one short-term, one longer.
First, the short-term reason: I had knee surgery this past Wednesday.
The longer-term reason: upon my return from vacation a few weeks ago, I made a few resolutions, among them not to surf the web so much. Less time spent wandering the digital back alleys has resulted in fewer things to blog about.

In Japan, a company is marketing nonalcoholic beer to children. Awesome!

Making the rounds in the blog world today is an interesting Scientific American article about how and when young children learn to understand symbols.
Of course, the article got its own front-page post on MetaFilter, and the first commenter to that thread made a hilarious observation: “Even some older kids still miss the point”

Poor Samuel has lost all four of his upper and bottom front teeth, though the bnew bottom teeth are coming in pretty quickly (Aside: isn’t that the cutest face you’ve ever seen? I’m not biased or anything)

Katie and I have a long history of adapting songs to fit out pets. Two of my favorites: our former cocker spaniel had problems with his anal glands and would frequently drag his ass across the floor (gross, I know). This action became known as the ‘Butt Scootin’ Boogie’. And at one point, we lived in a two-story townhome; when our 20-pound cat would jump down from the furniture to the floor upstairs, we could hear his landing loudly downstairs, at which point we broke out in ‘I fell the earth move under my feet…’

Thankfully, Samuel’s new kindergarten teacher apparently doesn’t read my blog (like who does?); this morning, she let Samuel into her classroom and she didn’t send me to the principal to have my mouth washed out with soap.