SillyDad.com!

Is Best Buy too much competition? Gossip is traveling real fast that Circuit City is filing Chapter 11. My curiosity peaked and so I did a little investigating. Apparently it’s true according to Snopes, and not only that but you may want to go use up any gift cards you might be holding onto.

Unfortunately this will also leave more people unemployed, seeking out new jobs.

-sillydad

It’s all relative… Well it still doesn’t ease the pain…

Today oil prices soared up $5 to a new record of $132/barrel. Crikeys! And probably most people think Bush is raking in some sort of profits from the high gas prices. Apparently quite the opposite, and in fact, OPEC seems to be liking the idea of putting the squeeze on American drivers, so much so the U.S. Congress wants to sue OPEC for not increasing oil outputs…

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved legislation on Tuesday allowing the Justice Department to sue OPEC members for limiting oil supplies and working together to set crude prices, but the White House threatened to veto the measure.

The bill would subject OPEC oil producers, including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela, to the same antitrust laws that U.S. companies must follow.

These same people who are suing OPEC are the same people who say NO to drilling, NO to refineries, and tie the hands of the oil business… then turn around and complain about the price of oil.

I know hauling 5 kids around town in my super minivan, I can definitely feel the pinch of high gas prices, but it’s time to stop complaining and to take matters into our own hands. Either find a new energy source or stop being so dependent on imported oil. Let’s drill. Let’s build refineries. We just found enough oil in Montana and North Dakota to extract what they claim to be 4.3 billion barrels of oil.

The U.S. Geological Survey calls it the largest continuous oil accumulation it has ever assessed.

What the hell are we waiting for folks?

-sillydad

Modern Day Dad finds an article about a recent study which determines the first borns get all the brains. I have heard this before and never thought it held too much weight even though it did seem that way. My older sister was a whiz kid and graduated 2nd in her high school class, then off to Stanford University. Me, well I didn’t get much for brains but I like to say I got all the looks, or the athletic ability. My sister now is an Attorney at a law firm in Florida.

I scan all the people I know, and it’s funny how the older children always seemed to do better academically.

Well besides just plain observation the study also found:

First-born children possess IQs that are 2.3 points higher, on average, than their younger siblings, a new study contends.

This finding held true even when first-born children didn’t survive and a younger child was reared as the eldest, scuttling the idea that genetics determines the difference in IQ among siblings, according to the Norwegian researchers who authored the report, published in the June 22 issue of the journal Science.

“This study really puts to an end a debate that’s been going on for more than 70 years,” said Frank J. Sulloway, a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, Institute of Personality and Social Research, and the author of an accompanying commentary in the journal. “The theory of biological differences is pretty much dead as a doornail.”

So whether you think it has to do with genetics think again. There is something that is learned by the first born that pushes them to excel. Could it be they are more independent as they don’t have an older sibling to look after them? Could it be they are the first child to discover things on their own, rather than being shown by an older sibling?

One theory:

“Indirectly, it supports the theory that social support and attention within the family explain the difference. First children will not have to share this attention at first. The more children, the less attention will be provided to each child if parental resources are limited,” he added.

Another:

Sulloway noted that there are several theories that might explain the difference in IQ between first-born and younger siblings. Among these is one that says that more money is spent on the oldest child, and, as family size increases, less money is available for other children, leaving them with less opportunity. “But this doesn’t intuitively strike me as the explanation,” he said.

And:

Another theory holds that the first-born child gets more of the parents’ attention, but Sulloway also discounts this theory.

Another theory shotdown:

Still another explanation is that older children teach younger children, and the act of teaching raises the IQ. “The problem with this theory is that teaching has to raise the IQ of the first-born more than it does the IQ of younger siblings, in order to produce a birth order difference,” he said.

How about niche partitioning? Sulloway seems to like this theory:

A theory that Sulloway likes is called “niche partitioning.” This theory suggests that once a role in the family is filled, others have to find roles that help them compete for attention in the family.

Sulloway noted that first-borns are judged to be more disciplined and more hard-working and more intelligent than their younger siblings. “The explanation for this is that first-borns occupy the role of a surrogate parent in the family,” he said. “It is a great way to get brownie points from parents.”

Because older children already occupy that niche in the family, younger children have to find other roles to play, Sulloway said. “So, younger siblings look for other things to be good at,” he said. “It may be that that extra 2.3 points in IQ reflects an investment of time to get that, and the later-born is investing that time in something else and is getting 2.3 extra points in something else,” he added.

Given that each child is finding his or her own niche, the difference in IQ is nothing for parents to worry about, Sulloway said.

No matter what theory we go with, I wouldn’t necessarily put all of our eggs in one basket. Maybe the combination of all of these factors intertwined into which ones seem to weigh more heavily depending on situational factors will probably determine the overall outcome of a child. But either way, it doesn’t tell us the future of the child, just the predetermined capabilities of them.

sillydad

And why do we care?

-sillydad

I sometimes entertain the thought of what it would be like to be the parent of a kid who could spell better than myself. The other night I watched the annual Scripps National Spelling Bee on T.V. It amazes me to see kids who have yet to reach puberty spelling words I never knew existed. Ever play Balderdash? Almost reminded me of the type of words you would find in that game and instead being asked to spell them.

Latin to Greek origins. Italian origins. Even Hebrew origins. This of course would prompt clues into letters of the word and how they were spelled.

I remember 15 years ago words these kids had to spell were words like: gorgeous, accomodate, acknowledgment, acoustic, and so on. The words these kids had to spell were absolutely unreal. Almost impossible in my eyes unless they had some how come across the word before and happened to remember the spelling. Here is a list I got from here:

abseil
acariasis
aniseikonia
apocope
apozem
araneiform
beccafico
biwa
bouleuterion
burelage

Sorry but I don’t even know what these words are. Abseil I think I may have heard before. The others… well… I never knew they existed.

But the winner this year was Evan M. O’Dorney, age 13, of Danville, California. He even said the Spelling Bee was not his favorite competition and enjoyed math and music much better. He likes Math because of the logic behind it. Well for someone who doesn’t care for the spelling bee he did a pretty good job wouldn’t you say? Nothing against the kid but the parents should clue the kid in and at least have him pretend to enjoy it. It is just more respectful towards those other kids who have a passion to win.

The kid is obviously gifted and I can’t imagine raising a kid with such talent.

Anybody else watch the spelling bee??

-sillydad

When I was a kid Memorial Day was nothing but another day with a parade. Though I knew what it was about it wasn’t until years later I began to really understand the importance of the day. After learning more about history and discovering a deeper interest in America’s past-time, Memorial Day morphs into something more important. It becomes a day to remember and honor. It becomes something that makes a little more sense.

Daddy Pundit has a photo and story that appeared on the National Review Online website. It is a sad story but it reminds us of the sacrifices our men and women overseas are making for this country. It not only reminds us of our current soldiers but those who fought in all the wars leading up to this time. From the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, up through WWI and WWII, the Korean and Vietnam wars, and present day conflicts around the globe. War affects families, lives, and an entire nation.

Below is a small excerpt of the story.

MURFREESBORO —Heather Southward Golczynski pulled six more letters out of her mailbox Tuesday, sent from across the nation by people touched by her husband’s sacrifice and her son’s courage.

Her husband, Marine Staff Sgt. Marcus “Marc” Golczynski, was killed in Iraq on March 27. At his funeral in April, Daily News Journal photographer Aaron Thompson captured Marc Golczynski’s teary-eyed son, 8-year-old Christian, accepting a U.S. flag from his father’s casket.

It was a picture of a moment that moved many Americans and stirred national interest in the Golczynskis’ story.

“I see all of Marc’s heart in him. I’m proud he stood up,” Heather Golczynski said of the now-famous photograph. “Even in the absolute sadness of it all, he was a brave kid — he has the heart of his daddy.”

-sillydad

This is what I have always wondered about twins. Today we can determine who a killer is by matching DNA. But the crazy thing is identical twins have the same DNA. Cool eh? So would you lock them both up or try to figure out who the evil twin was?

Thanks to Hsien at Eye on DNA for pointing us to a similar incident that came to the forefront but it wasn’t as serious as murder. Who’s your daddy? Which twin is the father of the child? The woman claims she had sex with both twins on the same day. So the custody battle rages on.

This is funny… sorta. The Judge wants to break the child support down 50/50 between the twins. He feels they “both played, so both should pay.”

I guess in a murder case you couldn’t do it that way because there would be strictly one killer and one innocent. Well unless of course they were in on it together and then felt they couldn’t prove who did it if they kept pointing fingers at each other. Actually that would make a cool novel… hmmm

OK I’m back…

But with twins who both had fun on the same day…. well… I guess neither one did anything differently. So I would have to agree with the Judge. You can’t pick and choose on this one… both of them are guilty… make them pay.

What do you think??

-sillydad

Well the game itself might be safe but waiting in line to purchase it is another story.

One man has already been shot, people mugged, and fights have broken out. So before you take your son or daughter for a nice dad bonding moment while standing in line for a new toy, think again.

Read this article.

-sillydad

Study: Stay-at-home moms deserve high pay

What about Stay at Home Dads???

MSNBC came out with an article that pinpoints an average dollar amount if a mother was to stay home with her children and actually receive a pay check.

Just in time for Mother’s Day, an informal study conducted by Web site Salary.com shows that stay-at-home moms would earn an average of $131,471 annually, including overtime, if they received a paycheck.

And not to toot my own horn but, men stay home too… Where can I pick up my paycheck at the end of the week..??

Anyway, you may find the rest of the article interesting - go read it.

-sillydad

Photo by Washington Post

Yea, so who does pressure us the most? Let’s side step from the normal questionaire we have been answering and focus on an article I just read. (Hat Tip to Rebel Dad for directing me to the article.)

In today’s society both men and women get pressured into living up to certain gender standards. But who is it that really insists we meet those standards? According to an article in the Washington Post, Men are the ones who put all the pressure on themselves to live up to these expectations.

“They make little comments that sound friendly enough, but that contain a subtle dig. They just love to make a guy feel guilty for failing to spend enough time with his tools, his sporting goods and all the other things that fall under the rubric of “gear.”"

But what I find interesting is even working dads are experiencing this more and more. They are spending so much time at the office and less time on the golf course with their buddies. In fact, they are spending less time with their family and children. I think the picture sums up the situation quite accurately.

Go read the full article

-sillydad