We got a letter in the post a few days ago about the census, which is happening on the 6th of March.
Apparently it is normal these days to fill out the forms online, and they don't automatically post out paper forms. (Makes sense -- I'm sure it saves time for the data entry staff, and less resources used.)
However, they still offer the option of requesting a paper version.
Even though I am sure I am causing more trouble, I requested the paper version. Why? Well, I thought it would be better for the children's education, that we can all sit around the table as a family and discuss together the questions and our answers. Doing it one-by-one online would lose that interactiveness, and I doubt it would be as educationally valuable.
So, sorry Stats NZ for causing you more trouble! But maybe doing the paper forms will encourage some future statisticians.
Monday 26 February 2018
Wednesday 21 February 2018
MMR vaccine and autism - 20 years on
20 years ago this month, Andrew Wakefield and co-authors published a paper in The Lancet suggesting a link between the MMR vaccine and autism.
Well, it was bad science on so many different levels, and the paper was retracted. In the last 20 years, all attempts to show a link between the MMR vaccine and autism have failed.
Current best evidence is that there is no link between the MMR vaccine and autism.
Moreover, measles is a terrible disease, and all children (except for the very small few for medical reasons) should receive this vaccine.
Sadly though, Wakefield's paper has wrongly influenced many parents, resulting in new measles outbreaks and deaths. Even more sadly, this same misinformation continues to be repeated (along with bad reasoning to do with conspiracy theories and individual freedoms).
This BBC radio broadcast is a very good summary of the current situation.
And if you haven't yet done so, please vaccinate your children.
Well, it was bad science on so many different levels, and the paper was retracted. In the last 20 years, all attempts to show a link between the MMR vaccine and autism have failed.
Current best evidence is that there is no link between the MMR vaccine and autism.
Moreover, measles is a terrible disease, and all children (except for the very small few for medical reasons) should receive this vaccine.
Sadly though, Wakefield's paper has wrongly influenced many parents, resulting in new measles outbreaks and deaths. Even more sadly, this same misinformation continues to be repeated (along with bad reasoning to do with conspiracy theories and individual freedoms).
This BBC radio broadcast is a very good summary of the current situation.
And if you haven't yet done so, please vaccinate your children.
Monday 19 February 2018
Latest read-aloud books
I haven't written about our reading for a while, so here's an update of what I have read aloud to Mulan and Miya over the past year (maybe I'll update what I have been reading myself some time, too):
Harry Potter (J. K. Rowling):
At the moment, I am reading aloud the first Harry Potter book to Mulan and Miya (we will probably finish it this week). I read it out loud to Mulan when she was 7 1/4, and since then she has read it to herself another few/several times (as well as gradually read the rest of the series). Mulan highly recommends it, and Miya decided she was ready to hear it now.
We generally read it earlier in the day, rather than in the evening before bed, as in some places it can be a little too exciting. In one place Miya was a bit worried by the conflict, though it wasn't bad enough to stop reading. I wouldn't have wanted to read it to Miya any earlier than this, but I think she is just ready for it now, and she is thoroughly enjoying it.
The Swiss Family Robinson (Johann David Wyss):
We finished reading aloud The Swiss Family Robinson a couple of weeks ago. This was one I chose particularly for Mulan, although Miya was happy to listen as well.
I must admit to being a little disappointed by this book. It is supposed to be one of those "must-read" classics, and yet I find myself thinking that it is not a very good book. I wouldn't recommend it.
The main strength of the book, as I see it, is that it is aiming to be an inspirational "don't panic, with a good education and practical problem-solving skills you can survive anywhere." And yet, at the same time it was completely unrealistic. The family was supplied with such an overabundance of resources, that the girls and I were left in fits of laughter at the ridiculousness of it. Initially, they were conveniently left with perfectly suited machinery, weapons, animals, seeds, food, etc, etc on their crashed ship (all the other people on board departed in lifeboats, and then the family, at their convenience, carried the ship's amazing range of goods to their camp, setting themselves up in luxurious comfort). And then, throughout the rest of the book, the family continued to "discover" pretty much every possible useful animal or plant from all over the world, conveniently located within a few days' walk from where they landed. The girls and I had fun trying to locate where in the world each animal/plant really came from, and by the end of the book I think we had covered pretty much every land mass and climate. (The family's "ability/skill" reminds me of this cockroach story, or this song!)
But even though the book was aiming to be an educational how-to-survive-in-the-natural-world, we also couldn't entirely trust its account of the workings of the natural world. All too often, it got the facts wrong about various animals and plants (and not just where they are located in the world). Perhaps the funniest was how it turned boas into bullet-proof monsters, many times larger than their actual maximum size.
Another problem was that the storyline wasn't that good, either. It soon turned into fairly dull episodic accounts of merely "find this new animal/plant, then eat/use it in some way". There was no real plot development, as a good novel should have.
And then there was the ongoing morally-questionable attitudes of the family -- sexism, racism and barbaric violence. The sexism was to do with how the family mother was treated; the racism was to do with the "Malay pirates"; the barbaric violence was to do with how, in each situation, their primary attitude was to shoot and blow things up, unnecessarily killing and destroying, and mostly blind to life and beauty.
Wishing Chair books, Secret Seven 1 (Enid Blyton):
Before The Swiss Family Robinson, last year we read the various Wishing Chair books, as well as the first Secret Seven book. This was for Miya, as Mulan had already read these before.
While Enid Blyton books still continue to be a family favourite, and are generally well-written, exciting adventures, I must admit to getting a little sick of the vindictive nastiness that happens too frequently in Blyton's books. All too often, and I think especially in Blyton's books for younger children, the central conflict/adventure in the stories revolves around characters being nasty to each other, and the hero's solution is to out-trick the tricksters. And while trickery and oneupmanship may be fun, funny and okay sometimes, I think Blyton relies on this plot technique a little too much, resulting in bad role modeling and pessimistic attitudes about human interactions.
Animal Ark (Lucy Daniels), Mrs Pepperpot (Alf Proysen), Magic Tree House (Mary Pope Osbourne):
Before reading the Enid Blyton books, I read aloud several light chapter books for Miya. We can't now remember exactly which ones they were, and in which order they were read in, but they included Animal Ark books, Mrs Pepperpot books and Magic Tree House books. These are all good first chapter books, and, as I wrote here last June, Miya soon took over reading them herself.
---
UPDATE: Mulan and Miya read this and said they agreed with what I wrote. Mulan said that I should add that the narrator/father in The Swiss Family Robinson was like Google.
Harry Potter (J. K. Rowling):
At the moment, I am reading aloud the first Harry Potter book to Mulan and Miya (we will probably finish it this week). I read it out loud to Mulan when she was 7 1/4, and since then she has read it to herself another few/several times (as well as gradually read the rest of the series). Mulan highly recommends it, and Miya decided she was ready to hear it now.
We generally read it earlier in the day, rather than in the evening before bed, as in some places it can be a little too exciting. In one place Miya was a bit worried by the conflict, though it wasn't bad enough to stop reading. I wouldn't have wanted to read it to Miya any earlier than this, but I think she is just ready for it now, and she is thoroughly enjoying it.
The Swiss Family Robinson (Johann David Wyss):
We finished reading aloud The Swiss Family Robinson a couple of weeks ago. This was one I chose particularly for Mulan, although Miya was happy to listen as well.
I must admit to being a little disappointed by this book. It is supposed to be one of those "must-read" classics, and yet I find myself thinking that it is not a very good book. I wouldn't recommend it.
The main strength of the book, as I see it, is that it is aiming to be an inspirational "don't panic, with a good education and practical problem-solving skills you can survive anywhere." And yet, at the same time it was completely unrealistic. The family was supplied with such an overabundance of resources, that the girls and I were left in fits of laughter at the ridiculousness of it. Initially, they were conveniently left with perfectly suited machinery, weapons, animals, seeds, food, etc, etc on their crashed ship (all the other people on board departed in lifeboats, and then the family, at their convenience, carried the ship's amazing range of goods to their camp, setting themselves up in luxurious comfort). And then, throughout the rest of the book, the family continued to "discover" pretty much every possible useful animal or plant from all over the world, conveniently located within a few days' walk from where they landed. The girls and I had fun trying to locate where in the world each animal/plant really came from, and by the end of the book I think we had covered pretty much every land mass and climate. (The family's "ability/skill" reminds me of this cockroach story, or this song!)
But even though the book was aiming to be an educational how-to-survive-in-the-natural-world, we also couldn't entirely trust its account of the workings of the natural world. All too often, it got the facts wrong about various animals and plants (and not just where they are located in the world). Perhaps the funniest was how it turned boas into bullet-proof monsters, many times larger than their actual maximum size.
Another problem was that the storyline wasn't that good, either. It soon turned into fairly dull episodic accounts of merely "find this new animal/plant, then eat/use it in some way". There was no real plot development, as a good novel should have.
And then there was the ongoing morally-questionable attitudes of the family -- sexism, racism and barbaric violence. The sexism was to do with how the family mother was treated; the racism was to do with the "Malay pirates"; the barbaric violence was to do with how, in each situation, their primary attitude was to shoot and blow things up, unnecessarily killing and destroying, and mostly blind to life and beauty.
Wishing Chair books, Secret Seven 1 (Enid Blyton):
Before The Swiss Family Robinson, last year we read the various Wishing Chair books, as well as the first Secret Seven book. This was for Miya, as Mulan had already read these before.
While Enid Blyton books still continue to be a family favourite, and are generally well-written, exciting adventures, I must admit to getting a little sick of the vindictive nastiness that happens too frequently in Blyton's books. All too often, and I think especially in Blyton's books for younger children, the central conflict/adventure in the stories revolves around characters being nasty to each other, and the hero's solution is to out-trick the tricksters. And while trickery and oneupmanship may be fun, funny and okay sometimes, I think Blyton relies on this plot technique a little too much, resulting in bad role modeling and pessimistic attitudes about human interactions.
Animal Ark (Lucy Daniels), Mrs Pepperpot (Alf Proysen), Magic Tree House (Mary Pope Osbourne):
Before reading the Enid Blyton books, I read aloud several light chapter books for Miya. We can't now remember exactly which ones they were, and in which order they were read in, but they included Animal Ark books, Mrs Pepperpot books and Magic Tree House books. These are all good first chapter books, and, as I wrote here last June, Miya soon took over reading them herself.
---
UPDATE: Mulan and Miya read this and said they agreed with what I wrote. Mulan said that I should add that the narrator/father in The Swiss Family Robinson was like Google.
Friday 2 February 2018
Marx
I've just started watching Robert Paul Wolff's latest video series -- this time on Karl Marx. So far it is excellent, and I highly recommend it.
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