It’s sushi for everyone tonight!

I was poking around and stumbled upon Geni, an online genealogy program . You start with a simple Mother and Father entry, and your tree quickly grows from there.

I had a good time getting the first few generations up there. I read recently that they were having some trouble with security, but they’ve got it all under control.

What I love is that I could get it going, email the links, ad have others add on. I also like that it is all ajax-y, meaning it’s a little bit of World 1.0 meets Web 2.0.

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Have you checked the smoke alarms in your house? Have you written an escape plan? Do you have fire extinguishers? Have you had a fire drill?

The University of Oklahoma Police Department has a guide for Home Fire Safety. It’s worth a glance, and it serves as a healthy reminder to us all.

(Note- While Vinny is on jury duty, he’s preplanned a few blog entries based on banging around the internet. Try not to be too disappointed.)

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If you’ve ever taken a good look at the internet, there are a lot of groups for moms, but not too many for dads.

This is the Meetup.com list for parenting groups near my home. Not one is for dads. There are couples groups, mothers groups, parents of twins. Nothing for dads. I’m not quite sure why.

Are we less organized? Are we of lesser need? Is there a fear that we would just sit, drink, and talk about porn? Football? Hockey? I was kind of hoping to find a group and try it out. I had more luck finding a group for harmonica players.

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Every once in a while, it all works out.

I love that the blogosphere is picking up the HPV vaccine and some of the controversy around it. Today I read a post on Angry Pregnant Lawyer about the ridiculous editorial letters by unthinking and brainless folks who still think that an HPV vaccine will be a license for sexual irresponsibility. I’m glad APL is calling them for publishing that missive.

I also got a comment on the post from Sam at The aftermath of rainbows and unicorns. She is very new to blogging, but you can tell from reading it that she ‘gets it.’ Her writing is thoughful, thought-provoking, and deeply touching. You’d never believe she is 15 if she didn’t tell you outright. I suspect that once you read it, you’ll add it to your feed reader immediately. It took me one post to do that. Welcome Sam!

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With 2 kids growing up, we need to be able to pay for college. In this podcast, I discuss one plan that may not be going as well as we had hoped it would.

If you have thoughts, ideas, or links, send them in. I’ll add them to the show notes.

Helpful Links

• www.savingforcollege.com
• The Smart Student Guide to Financial Aid
• Sensible Investor on College Savings
• Money Magazine on College Savings
• TIAA-CREF on saving for college

Call the voice comment line at (206) 350-KIDS
email me at digitalfatherpodcast (AT) gmail.com
Shownotes are always available at digitalfather.com

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There has been a tremendous discovery in the world of medicine. According to the Centers for Disease Control:

In June 2006, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted to recommend the first vaccine developed to prevent cervical cancer and other diseases in females caused by certain types of genital human papillomavirus (HPV). The vaccine, Gardasil®, protects against four HPV types, which together cause 70% of cervical cancers and 90% of genital warts. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently licensed this vaccine for use in girls/women, ages 9-26 years. The vaccine is given through a series of three shots over a six-month period.

Now I’m ready for any vaccine that has the potential to prevent even one form of cancer. This one may prevent 4 forms of HPV, which causes 70% of cervical cancers. Unfortunately, some folks are against it. Check out this lady (who hails from NY, which embarrasses me to no end…) who was quoted in The New Scientist:

…[R]eligious groups are gearing up to oppose vaccination, despite a survey showing 80 per cent of parents favor vaccinating their daughters. “Abstinence is the best way to prevent HPV,” says Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council, a leading Christian lobby group that has made much of the fact that, because it can spread by skin contact, condoms are not as effective against HPV as they are against other viruses such as HIV. “Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful, because they may see it as a licence to engage in premarital sex,” Maher claims, though it is arguable how many young women have even heard of the virus.

So we’re back to this “head in the sand” attitude. We’re back to the idea that “if we talk about sex with them, they’ll think we approve of it.” The CDC calls it “disihibition”, defined as “continuing or returning to high-risk behaviors when one feels protected” and that is a fear with many activities. If you give someone a bullet-proof vest, they may be better protected, but a proper counselor works to convince them it is not guaranteed to stop all bullets. That’s what parenting is about.

I had heard about the vaccine in the news, but we haven’t yet spoken to our doctor about it. We did visit with a friend last night, who mentioned it, stating that many gynecologists are recommending that you talk to your daughter about why they need this vaccine. There has been discussion on the internet about it as well,as seen here at Fox and cancer.com. While I appreciate that I should discuss my daughter’s medical treatments with her, at age 9 I did not explain the mechanisms by which she could get mumps, measles, or rubella. However, she got the shot because it would prevent some pretty ugly diseases. That will be the extent of our discussion of HPV. We won’t even discuss what body systems it wold affect. Why would I? She’s 9, for heavens sake!

Finally, David Catania of the Washington D.C. City Council has proposed that girls in D.C. younger than 13 be required to have the vaccine, or have a parent waiver signed. Some have objected for the above reasons, others because it may be seen as a way to imply that young black girls (the majority of the D.C. public school population being black) are more likely to be sexually active. However, cervical cancer in black women is on the rise. The goal behind the law is not to prevent girls from going to school, or even to require the vaccine. It is meant to open discussion, and may even be able to tap into funding for girls and women who can’t afford the $360 it costs for the vaccine. I’m especially impressed with the response of Perneesa Steele, founder of the Richmond, VA-based Balm in Gilead, which is sponsoring “Spread the Word, Save a Sister”, whose goal is encouraging women of color to be tested and vaccinated. She says “I’d hate for us, 50 years from now,to be asking the question ‘Why did all the white kids get the vaccineand the black ones didn’t?’”

I’d like to encourage all of you to be talking to the young women in your family about this vaccine. If we do, I think we could all, 50 years from now, be saying “that was the turning point in the fight against cervical cancer.”

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Direct Link to mp3 file

Show Notes:

• Step One- Find out what he knows, both from a religious and practical viewpoint.
• Step Two- Pick the time and place.
• Step Three- Get the difficult words out in the open and state your peace.
  • Contraception
  • Abstinence
  • Safe Sex
  • Love, Respect and Dignity
• Step Four- Answer questions.
• Step Five- Create an environment where questions are accepted and encouraged in the future.

Call the voice comment line at (206) 350-KIDS
email me at digitalfatherpodcast (AT) gmail.com
Shownotes are always available at digitalfather.com

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I got on godaddy last night and bit the bullet. $6.95 for a domain name.

Now you can find me at digitalfather.com. Of course, if you’ve bookmarked me, I’m not going anywhere soon, but if I do, this domain will follow me.

I’m also pointing worldofbernie.com back to Bernies World. I will use my personal domain to connect all of the sites together, including my choir. When that’s ready, I’ll point you there. In the meantime, thanks for bookmarking!

Apparently Skippy’s teachers just realized that next week is a Standardized Testing week. They will have to curtail their assignments and tests while the students take the English/ Language Arts exam.

As such, they are piling on two weeks worth of work this week. Skippy cam home with piles of homework in every subject, as well as a number of projects.

• He has to do a report on plate tectonics, focusing on the Scotia Plate. The only links he could find (my wife looked too) were written on a graduate level. Report due Friday. Test that day too.
• He wrote a report over the holiday break for English, using the assignment sheet he received before the break. The paper is due in 2 weeks, so Skippy handed it in today for feedback. The teacher looked at the paper today (first one handed in) and called it a good start. He’s revising the assignment, because no one does it until the week before it’s due.
• Math test, which was planned for next week, but was advanced to Thursday.
• Social Studies test tomorrow.
• Health test on Friday. (I think he procrastinated on this one, though)

I have to give him credit, though. He has come home every day since the break and worked from arrival to bedtime without fail. He goes to rehearsal for the play at least 3 days each week, and still manages to work hard at home. He’s achy from dance rehearsals, but won’t take a bath until the weekend because he doesn’t have the time.

I don’t know if I could work that hard. He certainly isn’t getting much love from the school. They work him harder and harder each day. A number of his teachers, however, don’t return phone calls. they don’t respond to emails. He was out sick for a week in the late fall, and was told by the long-term sub in his Social Studies class that he would not have to make up 5 assignments. He didn’t. Then he was given zeros for each of them, and his grade dropped about 10 points for the first quarter. My wife had to call the Assistant Superintendent because no one would even return her calls about this problem which we’ve been fighting for 3 months.

Did you ever have one of those bosses who asked more and more from you, and then gave you no credit for the work you’d done? All they did was find fault with your work? Imagine handing in a 13 page paper, making 1 punctuation mistake, and getting a 95. The imagine the student sitting next to you hands in a 3 page paper, makes 13 mistakes, and gets a 95. (True story) Would you work harder? I find myself telling my son to do less. Imagine that you have to do less because you don’t get credit for it, and you only raise everyone’s expectation of you.

What a tragic state of affairs. He’s being great about it, and I just want to go up there and start kicking people in the ass. I can’t believe I worked at that joint.

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