DiaperFreeBaby

http://www.diaperfreebaby.org
A little too late for my kids, but interesting.
One primary prerequisite is of course at least one parent must be with the child at all times.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/diaper_free_babies
By RODRIQUE NGOWI, Associated Press Writer
Mon Aug 27, 2:05 PM ET



SUTTON, Mass. - Thirteen-month-old Dominic Klatt stopped banging the furniture in the verandah, looked at his mother and clasped his right hand around his left wrist to signal that he needed to go to the bathroom.

His mother took the diaper-less tot to a tree in the yard, held him in a squatting position and made a gentle hissing sound — prompting the infant to relieve himself on cue before he rushed back to play.

Dominic is a product of a growing "diaper-free" movement founded on the belief that babies are born with an instinctive ability to signal when they have to answer nature's call. Parents who practice the so-called "elimination communication" learn to read their children's body language to help them recognize the need, and they mimic the sounds that a child associates with the bathroom.

Erinn Klatt began toilet training her son at birth and said he has not wet his bed at night since he was six months old.

"The nice part is ... really getting the majority of poops in the toilet versus having to clean that," Klatt said. "I don't have to wake up at night and change diapers or have wet sheets anywhere. That's really nice.

"And being able to travel without a big, bloated diaper bag is terrific," she said.

Some parents and toilet training experts are skeptical.

"They teach them from birth? Oh, my God!" said 40-year-old Lisa Bolcato, as she held her 5-month-old daughter, Rose, at a park on Boston Common. "When you're getting two hours of sleeps between feedings, I don't think that you have the time to do it. You just make sure that your child's healthy and happy and well-fed."

Still, the practice is common in many parts of rural Africa and Asia where parents cannot afford diapers.

In the United States, many of the parents are stay-at-home-moms, but there are also working mothers. Some meet in online groups, at homes and in public parks to share experiences and cheer each others' efforts.

Experts at the Child Study Center at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center say children younger than 12 months have no control over bladder or bowel movements and little control for 6 months after that.

But some parents begin going diaper-free at birth, and the infants can initiate bowel movements on cue as young as 3 to 4 months, said Elizabeth Parise, spokeswoman of DiaperFreeBaby.org, a network of free support groups promoting the practice.

And unlike some methods of toilet training, there are no rewards or punishment associated with it.

Dr. Mark Wolraich, professor of pediatrics and director of the Child Study Center, said the practice essentially conditions young children to go to the bathroom at predictable times or show clear signs when they must go.

"To be truly toilet-trained, the child has to be able to have the sensation that they need to go, be able to interpret that sensation and be able to then tell the parent and take some action," said Wolraich, who is also editor of the American Academy of Pediatrics' book on toilet training.

"And that's different from reading the subtle signs that the child is making when they have to go to the bathroom."

Parents attempt the early training to forge closer ties with their infants, to reduce the environmental impact associated with diapers and to avoid skin irritation caused by a wet diaper, Parise said.

Others were inspired by observing the practice while traveling abroad.

The practice also enables parents to get insight into an infant's development since more accidents occur if a child falls sick or enters a new phase such as learning to crawl, walk or talk.

This is because an infant may be too distracted by illness or efforts to master a new skill to communicate the need to go to the bathroom, said Melinda Rothstein, an MIT business school graduate who co-founded DiaperFreeBaby.org.

She says finding a supportive daycare center is the biggest challenge for parents who choose not to use diapers. Other problems include finding tiny underwear for diaper-free infants.

Isis Arnesen, 33, of Boston, has a 14-week-old daughter, Lucia, who is diaper-free. She said it can be awkward to explain the process to people, such as when she helped Lucia relieve herself in a sink at a public restroom.

"Sometimes I don't know what's gonna happen and it doesn't work, and sometimes I feel a little embarrassed," Arnesen said. "It makes her happy though, right? She smiles, she's happy."

___

On the Net:

DiaperFreeBaby: http://www.diaperfreebaby.org

American Academy of Pediatrics on toilet training: http://www.aap.org/healthtopics/toilettraining.cfm

Wonder Woman: The Hiketeia

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	Comics & Graphic Novels
Author:	Greg Rucka, J.G. Jones, Wade Grawbadger

Written by Greg Rucka
Penciled by J.G. Jones
Inked by Wade von Grawbadger
96 pages, color
Published by DC Comics (ISBN 1-56389-898-5)

I consider myself fairly well-read, though it's obvious that my wide interests meant I could not count myself remotely specialised in any particular field.

Thus, I was quite intrigued to find a Wonder Woman story with a title borrowed from a Greek word I had never heard of before.

The Hiketeia (I still cannot find how it is spelt in Greek) revisits the old Greek tragedy of vengeance and duty in a modern setting, pitting two of DC's best superheroes: the demi-goddess Diana (known as Wonder Woman) from the mythical island of Themyscira, versus the Dark Knight (known as Batman).

Could two people holding polar opposite views be both right?

I have tried to confirm that Rucka (writer) didn't invent Hiketeia, and from what I was able to find on the internet, it does have historical basis.

In Hiketeia, a supplicant invokes a "ritual" to seek the protection of a suppliant, surrendering himself, his services, his honour, and his life. The suppliant who accepts is bound to honour his part of the agreement, providing the necessities. The covenant could only be revoked by the supplicant voluntarily, not the suppliant.

The graphic novel began with eeries figures of three females loitering outside the Embassy of Themyscira, where Diana pondered over some matters in apparent deep thought.

It went on to flashback to ancient Greece to illustrate the Hiketeia in action - a man fleeing from a crowd was given sanctuary by another, who from his attire, appeared to be an aristocrat. Subsequently, the suppliant (the aristocrat) found cause to be angry with the supplicant, beat him up and dragged him out of the house. When the suppliant tried to return home, he found himself attacked by the avenging furies.

The story moved back to the present day Gotham City where a woman was involved in close-quarter fight with a man, and managed to kill him. She was confronted during her escape attempt by the Batman who said she had killed four and could not let her go. During the chase that followed, she apparently fell into the sea and died.

Moving on the New York, readers saw that the woman did not die, but approached Wonder Woman, named herself Danielle Wellys, recited an ancient pledge asking for hiketeia. Wonder Woman sensed the furies were following the woman, but chose not to ask more, and instead granted her sanctuary.

The night itself, Wonder Woman confronted the furies, telling them Danielle Wellys was under her protection. The furies scoffed at her, and in turn told her their interest was in the suppliant, not the supplicant. Before departing, they gleefully told her that someone would come for the girl, soon.

And that someone was Batman, who managed to track Danielle Wellys to New York, to the Themysciran embassy.

A confrontation between Batman and Wonder Woman left them clear where each other stood. While Batman wanted to bring her in for murder of four men, Wonder Woman stood by her promise to protect Danielle. Batman withdrew after a quick fight, promising he would not give up, Wonder Woman promising neither would she.

All these while, Danielle waited for Diana to ask her the reason, but Diana chose not to, believing it should be up to Danielle to choose to tell. Desperate for Diana to really believe her, Danielle grabbed the Golden Lasso which would compel her to tell the truth, and that she did murder the four men, in vengeance for them causing the death of her sister.

Danielle further revealed that she was driven to vengeance by the furies - the first hint of the erynnes playing more than a passive role in the whole story, and possibly the answer to how a modern American girl like Danielle could have known of the ancient hiketeia ritual.

To avoid Wonder Woman and Batman fighting further, Danielle ran away from the embassy. She was intercepted by Batman while trying to hitchhike out of New York. Alerted by the furies, Wonder Woman managed to locate her and an uneven fight between the Dark Knight and the Amazon princess ensued.

Defeated, Batman tried to seek Hiketeia from Diana, but was refused. Here, further references to Achilles and Lykaon (Lycaon) enabled me to check up further on hiketeia through the Illiad, Chapter 21.

Not wanting them to fight further, Danielle chose to end her life, leaving Wonder Woman crushed ... pondering whether it was the furies' intention all along to bring forth Danielle's blood and Diana's tears.

I could complain that while the story had tremendous promise, the writer seriously shortchanged Wonder Woman and Batman by limiting their options. In most other stories, both had been shown to be much more resourceful, flexible, and open-minded.

It should have been obvious to Wonder Woman that making Danielle a personal assistant to the Themysciran ambassador in New York, following her as she went about her duties, would not be the smartest course for someone with a police warrant of arrest.

In Danielle's case, good lawyer could have been much more effective. Unless Diana planned for Danielle to live the rest of her life in the embassy, she'd have to move Danielle, and the only viable place on the planet would be the island of Themyscira.

There were a lot of other options Batman and Wonder Woman could have talked about, but did not.

Batman too was rather abused. The Dark Knight is an implacable justicar, but it was not unknown for him to take a risk not to bring in a fugitive if there was extenuating circumstances for the crime, and there was reasonable grounds to believe the culprit would not be a further threat to society. Batman himself had done the same to some criminals, though I can't recall any murderers among them.

At the end, despite all the great graphics, I could not feel the sense of conflict between Diana protecting the girl and Batman hunting her. Diana's readiness to take her in could be attributed to gut-feel.

But it seriously shortchanged the concept of hiketeia as an honourable covenant if the suppliant was not shown to give serious consideration and questionings prior to granting it.

Some scans of the book available from http://community.livejournal.com/scans_daily/749821.html

A good review of this graphic novel in http://www.icomics.com/rev_062002_wonderwoman.shtml

Synopsis by google books in http://books.google.com/books?id=MaIJAAAACAAJ&dq=isbn:1563898985

Adding more years to my life and more life to my years ... step by step ...

It's been more than a month since the result of my health-screening, which the doctor told me I need to have regular exercise, and I need to lose several kilos.

The timing is somewhat fortuitous, since begining July, Snowylad has joined his sister Snowylass in the same childcare.  This meant considerable time-saving for me in the morning when I ferry them to one location instead of two, and in the evening when I pick them up again.

It took me a few days though to realise I now could use that time to do something in the morning.  What can I say?  Haven't been exercising for several years, and the hectic schedule of ferrying my wife and 2 kids had taken a certain toll on me for a while.

As it happens, there is a stadium opposite the childcare and it was only after passing by for the umpteenth time and seeing the joggers in the morning that it struck me I could be out there too.

So went to dig out my running shoes, and one Friday morning, I just hit the track.

Considering my condition, I figured I need a month of preparation before I can get into any serious stuff.  Fortunately, I didn't collapse after running round the track several times.

What did collapse was my old running shoes which was disintegrating internally.  Whatever made me think this was going to be free?

As I've been out of touched for a number of years, I was shocked to see the prices of running shoes in the market now.

But Snowylady was very understanding and told me to go ahead, heck, she'd even pay for it.  Just make sure I get good running shoes, she said.  Injuries from poor choice of shoes is unforgivable.  She wants me to exercise for my own good, and take care of the family better and longer, not be taken care of from getting hurt.

I've managed to more or less keep a disciplined approach to my new found activity.  Alternating between jogging and swimming for about 4 weeks, 3-4 times a week, I think I gave my heart enough cardio warm-ups for the next step.

Which I am still trying to figure out what it would be ...

Need to lose that tyre around the waist, I do ...

Need to tone the arms, I do ...

Need to get fit enough for the biathlon ... I do ... yeah right ... better don't kid myself.

I've been cutting it close coming to work on time, and I first need to work out how to obtain that extra time from the daily schedule to get the additional work out, before I can think of what work-out to do.

Seriously, our skin needs protection from the sun

http://newpaper.asia1.com.sg/printfriendly/0,4139,139583,00.html?

 

The Newpaper article (22 August 2007) on Asao Miwa (浅尾美和), a sporty 21-year old Japanese beach volleyball player, fashion model and TV personality, caught my eye.

The first thing that caught my eye was her flat tummy.  Cool. That's how everyone should strive to have their tummies.

But the next thing that caught my attention was her complexion ...

Look at what the sun did to her face!!!!

Spots, freckles, blotches ...

Now, this girl is a popular model, and there were pictures of her which didn't look so bad, some of them probably from when she was younger still (she's only 21).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Her website http://www.asaomiwa.com/ showed a few pictures of her where she looked so much better.  That does it ... no taking chances with our skins.

Yakari

http://www.yakari.fr/
One thing I miss in Singapore are European comics. Well, though Singapore has Tintin and Asterix, most European comics are not available. Even Lucky Luke is available only sporadically.

That is why I am glad to have found two series today Popular Bookstore: Clifton and Yakari, but each volume cost a hefty S$16.70. Popular is the only bookstore in Singapore I know that occassionally imported some European titles such as Trigan Empire and Storm.

To be fair, though many European titles were translated into English, I couldn't find most of them when I was in London.

Clifton: Strips

http://www.clifton.nl/strips.html
One thing I miss in Singapore are European comics. Well, though Singapore has Tintin and Asterix, most European comics are not available. Even Lucky Luke is available only sporadically.

That is why I am glad to have found two series today Popular Bookstore: Clifton and Yakari, but each volume cost a hefty S$16.70. Popular is the only bookstore in Singapore I know that occassionally imported some European titles such as Trigan Empire and Storm.

To be fair, though many European titles were translated into English, I couldn't find most of them when I was in London.

It's a matter of finding the right "motivation" to get them to pay up on child support

It makes one wonder how many others who are not applying for passports are shirking on their child support payments.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070814/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/passports_child_support

Passport rules snag child support cash

By KEVIN FREKING, Associated Press Writer Tue Aug 14, 6:38 PM ET

WASHINGTON - The price of a passport: $311,491 in back child support payments for a U.S. businessman now living in China; $46,000 for a musician seeking to perform overseas, and $45,849 for a man planning a Dominican Republic vacation.

The new passport requirements that have complicated travel this summer also have uncovered untold numbers of child support scofflaws and forced them to pay millions.

The State Department denies passports to noncustodial parents who owe more than $2,500 in child support. Once the parents make good on their debts, they can reapply for passports.

Now that millions of additional travelers need passports to fly back from Mexico, Canada, the Caribbean and South America, collections under the Passport Denial Program are on pace to about double this year, federal officials told The Associated Press.

In all, states have reported collecting at least $22.5 million through the program thus far in 2007. The money is then forwarded to the parent to whom it is owed.

Some people never learn.

A boxer paid $39,000 in back child support to the state of Nevada last year to get a passport, which he lost. This year, his promoter had to loan him $8,930 so he could pay off his new child support debts and get a new passport to fight overseas.

In one case last year, a man got his parents to pay his overdue child support — $50,498 to the state of Illinois.

"For us, it's been amazing to see how people who owe back child support seem to be able to come up with good chunks of money when it involves needing their passport," said Adolfo Capestany, spokesman for the state of Washington's Division of Child Support. "Folks will do anything to get that passport, so it is a good collection tool."

The $22.5 million reported to have been collected through the program this year is a conservative estimate. Some states voluntarily report the payments to the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement, but other states don't.

It took all of 2006 to collect the same amount under the program, which began in 1998.

Also contributing to the increased collections was a drop in the threshold for reporting child support debts to the State Department, from $5,000 to $2,500. As a result, 400,000 more cases were submitted to the department.

The state of Washington obtained $24,000 for Teresa Markley through the program. The money accrued over a couple of decades. She said she could have really used the money in past years, and at one point in the 1990s went on welfare for a few months to make ends meet. While her children are now grown, she said the payment still meant a great deal to her.

"What it means to me now is just to have some validation for the suffering I went through," said Markley, a resident of Tacoma, Wash.

Jeannette Dean of Seattle said she had to tap into her retirement savings and her son's savings bond to help pay for basic necessities after Washington state was unable to help her collect delinquent child support payments.

But this year, she received about $36,000 through the passport program. She said the money will be used to replenish the lost savings.

"It has given back to having a normal life versus struggling to pay dental bills and hospitals bills and things like that," Dean said.

The passport denial program is just one of several tools the government has to collect overdue child support. Overall collections totaled about $24 billion last year.

The largest share by far — $20.1 billion — came from withholding from a worker's paycheck. Unemployment insurance or state and federal income tax refunds can also be seized. States with lotteries also can deduct delinquent payments from winnings. Some states submit the names of those behind on their payments to credit reporting agencies.

Payments generated through the new passport requirements are an important sliver of what states collect each year on behalf of about 17 million children, said Margot Bean, commissioner for the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement.

"We often get payments of over $100,000," Bean said. "For whatever reason, this was the only way we could get the money."

For some families, the payments can mean the difference between having to rely on the government for assistance or not relying on it, Bean said. In cases where families have needed cash assistance through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program, a portion of the payments received through the passport program is used to reimburse the government.

Another jump in collections from the Passport Denial Program can be expected next year or in early 2009. That's when the new passport requirements will likely take effect for land and sea travelers too.

___

On the Net:

Passport Denial Program: http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cse/newhire/fop/passport.htm

《满城尽带黄金甲》预告片 Curse of the Golden Flower

This was the 2nd movie we watched on pre-National Day movie marathon.

Just 2 movies (yeah, one movie was a treat, two's considered a marathon for us with the 2 kids sleeping)

200 Pounds Beauty Byul Music Video sang by Kim Ah-Joong

Had a marathon movie night with Snowylady on the night before National Day.

She is very pretty. Pointed to a photo Snowylady and pointed "Don't she looks like you?"

Some days ... bad things seem to happen one after another

First, my mobile phone conked out.

Today, after picking up the children from childcare and buckling them up, the car battery gave out.

I suppose after nearly 4 years, it's about time, could have happened at a worse time, but it doesn't make it feel better.

I used to check the battery water level until recent months.  And I used to carry a spare bottle of battery water in the boot too.

*sigh*

How long is twenty-one years ...?

How long is twenty-one years ...?

More than a lifetime for some of my friends, they were not even born 21 years ago.

21 years ago, I was still programming on my Apple IIe, and playing F-15 flight simulator on monochrome computer monitor.

How the world has changed ... beyond my wildest imagination in 1986 of how the world with the Cold War then would look like 21 years later.

Hence, the first time I read the news, it boggled my mind that US schoolteacher Barbara Morgan (Official NASA Astronaut Bio Data website : http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/morgan.html) got another chance after 21 years, having been selected as backup astronaut for NASA Teacher in Space Program in 1985.

The primary candidate on that tragic mission was Christa McAuliffe, and the mission was on the US Space Shuttle Challenger which exploded during ascent on 28 January 1986.

Barbara Morgan (left) and the late Christa McAuliffe (right) in a photo taken 21 years ago.

I was still in secondary school at that time, and I recalled the headlines and frontpage photo that must have been reported in every major paper around the world then.

It was a moment of awakening for me, hurling from boyhood fantasy into the real world, shattering the imaginations that had been stoked ever since I watched James Bond's Moonraker movie.

After the Challenger disaster, Barbara Morgan returned to teaching 2nd and 3rd grader in McCall-Donnelly Elementary (Idaho), but also continued to be part of NASA's Education Division to spread education on space.

In Jan 1998, she was selected as mission specialist, and reported at Johnson Space Center in August 1998 for a 2-year training.  Subsequently, she worked in various capacities before being shortlisted for STS-118 (NASA website on the mission : http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/sts118/), scheduled to takeoff in US Space Shuttle Endeavour on August 8, 2007.

Inevitably, interviews with her will return to the Challenger tragedy in 1986.  This is what she has to say.

Christa’s legacy was open-ended, and is open-ended. Any teacher’s legacy is open-ended. I hope, and I know that people will be thinking about Christa and the Challenger crew and that’s a good thing and they’ll be thinking about many, many teachers and others who have worked very, very hard for 20 years to continue Christa’s and the rest of the Challenger crew’s work. I am just the next teacher of many to come, we’ve got three in training right now, and there will be more in the future, teachers who will fly as astronauts, so just, just one of a long step that will continue well into the future.

It is another evidence that all achievements today are made by humans standing on the shoulders of giants ... giants made of people building upon the work laid before by those who came before.

A belated shopping spree ... anime ... Gankutsuou and Agatha Christie

Last Saturday, discovered that Takashimaya is having a toys sale, and has great offers for a number of Anime titles distributed by ODEX (the company that is licensed to distribute some anime titles in Singapore, and threatening legal actions to illegal downloaders here).

I couldn't resist it ... the entire set of Agatha Christie's Great Detectives (アガサ・クリスティーの名探偵ポワロとマープル, Agasa Kurisutii no Meitantei Powaro to Maapuru) is being priced at S$10/box, the entire set in 3 boxes!  I came across this series some years back when I did download fan-subbed anime, but I only got the first 2 episodes. (official website)

Spent some time looking around for more, (trying to see if I can spend S$50 in a single receipt and redeem 2 hours parking fees), it was a bit of a challenge since I was carrying Snowylad and the boy liked to wander around (and this is in the midst of a toy fair).

Was temped to get Black Jack (ブラック・ジャック Burakku Jakku), originally a manga series by the great Osamu Tezuka, but considering I was not sure if the anime production lived up to the manga (which was great).  In any case, I can't find the complete series.

Finally settled on Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo (巌窟王, Gankutsuō), complete series 2 boxes, 24 episodes.  I didn't check carefully and didn't realise this adaptation of Alexandre Dumas (père) classic was set in a futuristic sci-fi setting. (official website)

Not only that, its unusual visual style layers Photoshop textures into digital animation, with backgrounds often rendered in 3D, is just a little less painful than psychedelic cartoonings of the 1960s.  It took a while before I just managed to filter out the distracting textures and concentrated on the characters.

My problem now is ... do I sleep? ... or do I watch? ...  Bearing in mind that I am trying to re-establish a regular exercise routine in the morning, the choice is so hard to make ...

K800i sent for repairs ...

Should I term it as less than a year ... or after nearly a year ...

For several months, the phone had been giving me problems related to the accessories.

The earpiece don't work well, the recharging don't work well ... basically, everything related to the contact point between the phone and the accesssories.

Today, it just gave up.  The scary thing is watching it occassionally going into bonkers mode, repeatedly beeping "Optimised charging" over and over before doing a flatliner ...

What else could I do except drive across the island during my lunchbreak to the service centre at Wisma, where I was issued an aged T68 which saw much wear and tear.

The recent forum letters complaining about Sony Ericsson's poor service at the service centre didn't help.

I was told I'll get the phone back on Sunday ... so I hope I am not the unlucky ones.