Analytical infrastructure for Experiments – @AirbnbNerds

Last night (4/2) the Airbnb Tech Talk was all about Experiments at Airbnb. (NB: @AirbnbNerds does a good job posting videos of (many of) the talks, so watch here for the posting of the video).

I was extremely interested in hearing how @AirbnbNerds do experiments. A previous TechTalk I’d attended covered the methods they’ve tried to nudge hosts to price their properties accurately (i.e., at the market clearing price). [no video apparently].

The talk was extremely intelligent, but not geared toward me and my posse (designers of particular experimental manipulations).

The speakers, Jan Overgoor and Will Moss, discussed the analytical infrastructure developed for implementing a host of experiments. Most of the attendees seemed to be data scientists; this became particularly evident at the audience’s “oooh” upon hearing that Airbnb has 18 data science people + 4 more programmers devoted to maintenance of the site tools. The role these teams play is self-evidently crucial: they’ve developed deep insight into appropriate sampling hygiene, valid statistical inferences, and well-thought-through protocols for timing and executing experiments. I also absolutely loved the rigor that they treat experiments as “code;” checked into GitHub, and if conditions change/evolve, check that change in.

Let me try to pinpoint one thing I had hoped to hear about which was not possible to fit into the talk: My dream talk would have revealed an inventory of hypotheses that they’ve formulated, based on deep knowledge of their customer base in combination with behavioral insights from academic research. Truth be told, I would be out of a job if they had built a cogent guide for identifying good topics to probe, designing those specific conditions, prioritizing the sequence of nested or imbricated experiments, along with clear steps for operationalizing each manipulation, and a concise and compelling way to think clearly about what counts as the appropriate control.

I don’t have pictures (my phone died), but Will Moss showed a beautiful dashboard they’ve built. Very well thought out and lovingly designed, it shows the experiment, with 4 columns for each cell (Mean, % change, p-value, graphic sparkline)

Below are my complete notes

Experiments at Airbnb
What we have learned and how do it now
Jan- data scientist Will – sw engineer

Jan – 2 hats – A team (analytics) Search team (lot of experiments, write search algorithms)

Experiments- why & what
Some common pitfalls
Experiment Reporting Framework

Why – Why not just launch & see what happens?
Often really hard to tell the effect of the change. Lots of external effects.
Daily, weekly (e.g. Tues more freq than Sat for searches); seasonality, etc
Little changes make little differences

2 references in footnote:
http://mcfunley.com/design-for-continuous-experimentation
http://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-run-an-ab-test.html

Actual effect [of up-down chart shown] is 1% – Treatment effect of dummy experiment.

What is the p-value?
How do people tend to use it – stop the experiment when p < some value (.05)
Very likely to find effects where none exist.
Def: The probability of B being diff than A by at least the observed difference, if there was no actual difference between the 2 options

Better: It’s a measure of whether the effect is bigger than noise

Pitfalls
Stopping too early
Not understanding the context
Assume that the system works correctly (returning the things it should be returning)

Example experiment: Increase the max value of the price slider from $300 to $1,0000

After 8 days: A significant 4% increase in bookings, rejoice! & P-value hit .05
After 36 days, delta was ~0, p = 0.4

When to Stop:
Don’t stop when p hits significance
Estimate time in advance that you run (ideal)
Interpret progress of delta and p-value (heuristic)
Stop when p < or = to dynamic variable (compromise)
Start low, and over time
Dynamic decision boundary: Much more conservative about false positives

Looking at Context
Huge re-design for Search
Before: Small map, little pictures
After: Big map, bigger pictures of properties

Test: delta near zero.
Broke down results by browser, and bug with IE in some cases caused a net drop of -0.27, but in chrome +2.07% and FFox +2.81%, Safari +0.86, yet IE -3.66%

Look at the funnel, dynamics
Search to book -0.31% p = 0.37
Search to contact -1.29% p = 0.04
Contact to book +0.99% p = 0.06
Contact to accept +1.58% p = 0.00
Accept to book -0.58% p = 0.11

Regression is more rigorous
Breaking down into separate cells reduces sample size
Computing interaction effects is onerous
Hard to account for external factors
Regression is better

Scrutinize your set-up
Whether you’re using 3rd party vendor for setting
Run dummy experiments – A/A tests
Hopefully it will return a null result

An example that helped us find a bug:
Treatment Uneven sample sizes uncover a bias
The mixed group problem
Most visitors are not logged in
Some are assigned to more than one group (multiple cookies on multiple devices)
Exclude them from analysis
But they’re the most engaged users

Where does bias come from
Mixed group users are evenly distributed over the treatments. We can’t assign the big users to that category
Not equal sample sizes
Control contains those who would have been mixed group users, and these are more likely to book and they are not excluded.
Control has a huge advantage over the test.
Think hard about confounding problems.
Our solution is to have equal sample sizes across cells.
[I really don’t understand this issue clearly]

Takeaways
Controlled are the way to go
Use them in product development

But
Set time in advance or give it enough time to run
Interpret progress over time
Break results down into meaningful cohorts and funnel steps
Use regression to model subtle effects
Run dummy experiments to test your set up
Identify confounding factors in the set-up

ENDS his part at 7;22

Experimental infrastructure
Mesos; hadoop; hive; presto are tools we build on to democratize data

Running experiments is crucial. But there are a lot of pitfalls. I used to believe that you can just throw into different buckets and then test differences
Solve pitfalls once. Don’t duplicate work
A team, should automate the things they approach

Design Tenets
Less susceptible to bad patterns (limit bias)
Analysis comes for free (we handle the nuances)
Deployment through Git(hub) – have the same rigor to experiments that we have for code changes.
Automatic (and reliable) logging. Need to reliably know that we put a user into the treatment group.

Example: Vary number of results shown on page (currently defaults to 12; vs 18, 24)
Define the experiment and the analysis
Deploy – write the code to run the experiment
Analyze – check out the results.

Dashboard shows the following fields
3 groups of columns + spark line for each cell (18 per page as control)
Mean, percent change, p-value + sparkline

Experiment Start End
User Cohort (All vs new vs returning)
Metric: All Pivot [select metric to pivot] Button for ‘Show raw value‘
Metrics include a dozen things (but not revenue), e.g., Date searchers, Number of date searches

Define experiment: We use yaml (bc if you show a PM words that are all under case run together, they’ll say this looks stupid), it’s machine readable, human readable: search results per page
Yaml lists:
treatments:
Control:

Deploy: Deliver_experiment
Function- give it the name of the experiment; 4 lambda functions. One for each treatment. Plus “unknown” lambda – if something goes wrong, deliver the miss; user won’t know that

Assigns user to group; logs assignment; execute lambda + Also in Javascript. We try to cache as much as possible. If you can’t run yr experiment in cache, it lops off half your sample.

Avoid bias:
user.get_treatment
Imagine that someone later comes back and says, IE is a dog, we can’t be showing users
Someone on another team jumps in and excludes IE.
Not clear now that we’re giving equal size cells.

Log correctly: 2 different ways of exclude IE, one that says, if IE, don’t serve 24 results. The 2nd way is logged as “served 24”, but if IE, exclude from log

Generate queries
Chronos (job scheduler)
Shared calculations (mixed groups, etc)
Experiments 1 through N
Database
UI for viewing data

Q: What trends are red-flags?
In general, if it’s fluctuating a lot, it shows that you’re too early. It is commutative, it’s computed from that time all the way back. We most often see high p-value & stable.

Q: How do you compute the function of dynamic decision boundary?
I run simulations, this trend, this # of hits, etc. How likely are we to miss. If you have enough data, I suggest you calculate a similar curve for your customer base.

Q: How many- 18 people + 4 on data infra team (audience gasps with envy)

Q: Mixed group – if you pick 10% for experiment, why not pick 10% of the rest for the control? (They are more likely to book and not excluded.)
Even if you only choose 10%, then it will still have too many mixed users/

Q: Instead of looking at the conversion, why not weight for sales value?
A: We do test on revenue, but those are a little different

Q: Ever segment by frequency of users. When you start, you’ll get more frequent users. Frequent users can blanket, and then over time, the less frequent visitors will begin to be in the mix.
A: We do segment out users

Q: Regression. Was this a recommendation to use regression on cohort?
Nice thing about regression is that you can do it all at once.
You can include all the factors, with one big analysis, and give you estimates, and whether the sets are correct. You can do many interactions at once. It’s a little bit harder to automate, and a little complicated
Regressions can be done wrong in a number of ways, but it’s a pretty stable

Q: Multi-armed bandit testing? Any reason you’ve not implemented?
A: We have not tried it. We found systems
Ranking function might be done best by M-A_B http://www.cs.nyu.edu/~mohri/pub/bandit.pdf

Q: What is the ROI of engineering?
We haven’t gotten into that. It’s not possible to answer mechanistically.
One of the things we didn’t mention: We lump in key business metrics, e.g., revenue.

Q: Multiple experiments impacting same KPI, and whether they interact
A: Great q. Interaction between experiments often happens. There’s not one single answer

2 Cowboys makers for a Rodeo

Our twins worked almost all of October making their costumes. Here they are putting the finishing touches on their outfits the night before trick or treating:

[vimeo 78381896]

In early Oct, I brought home a book (Family Fun Tricks & Treats). Upon looking through that whole menu, both boys decided they wanted to be cowboys. Finding & then painting the right sized boxes took up a lot of their time. We also scavenged thrift stores to find suspenders, hats, bandanas, lasso rope, and jeans. Two weeks before 10/31, we hit the East Bay Maker Faire, and that cinched our kids’ identity that they were makers, rather than purchasers of a costume. The fact that the boys actually prepped prior to 10/31 unambiguously reveals that they inherited their mom’s genes.

Good Experiences Live (GEL 2013 trip report)

Good Experience Lived up to its reputation as a gorgeous celebration of makers, problem framers/solvers, connectors.

Held in the Chelsea Cedar Dance studio, Mark began by dipping into what the building has seen and learned in its 99 yrs. One of its more recent incarnations was as the 1990s Annie Leibovitz studio. That’s the good Annie. GEL could easily be seen as the farm team for TED.  In previous events, Jimmie Wales, Zefrank, Marissa Mayer, Salman Khan, and many other luminaries debuted at GEL. (Let me add that I don’t view GEL as junior to its splashier poacher; it rather shows Mark Hurst’s ability to spot trends before the rest of us.)

When I showed up, I saw a celebrity econ-blogger bike by, prompting me to thank him for once having his intern disgorge excess bookage in my direction. Felix Salmon looks just like he blogs: arty, informed, playful. He was actually locking his bike, a good-boned Trek with discy tires. Lo, Felix was not accidentally at the same spot as me; he was going in the same door to GEL.  In the auditorium, there were couches that still had open seats. The seating itself aspired to point at the meme GEL aspires to ping its audience with:  We are in bodies, in this spot right here, with these other people who also have bodies.  That may well be the best reason to celebrate locality, another leit motif, particularly about things consumed in conference. Toward the front, the TechnoGEL-ly belly (rubbery bouncy wibbly wobbly) cushioning couch was open. Beside me sat Felix. After Mark’s intro, I decided this bubbly sofa was not the zafu I sought, so I jumped into a folding chair in the front row.

I sat next to an interesting family. Late in the game I learned that the mature couple’s daughter (college age), was also at GEL, sitting between the mom who is an explorer/artist, and the dad, who teaches organizational psychology across the globe. He’s taught in Africa, Asia, Australia, and as you’d suppose, has learned tons from his students.

Coffee is the only experience that was not empathetically grok’d by Mark Hurst and the other architects of the GEL experience. It’s a TEA-se and a blind spot to not accommodate one of the most accessible luxuries, that warm and convivial beverage. I asked the GEL producer if next year, could they try to get up a pop-cafe, on a bike perhaps. One pleasant grace note from the caterers: tea was hand-wraveled into cotton sachets, twisted to a loose knot to signal a touch of wabi.

With that one cavil, only unbounded hallelujahs remain for the good experiences lived through the entirety of GEL2013.

Some personal favorites:

@RachelShechtman has experimented with transforming retail into a magazine.  An adorable couple, the Davols, who banged around the world with the rock band, The Magnetic Fields, honed in on a very interesting question: What makes Paris Paris, and Stockholm ^2, and London ipse, undsoweiter? And the dimension that they focused on was reading, more particularly reading in public. The bookstalls along the river define Paris, and Prague, as do the baffle of bookstores that used to swarm Harvard Sq. Each characterizes a vibe that the Davols wanted more of, and they asked how they could seed more reading in public. They had brought on stage their Yoni, a designed carrel that easily forms building blocks to configure the space into a pop-up library. NON-Circulating library.  Let me say that again: The experience they are cultivating is a trustful, reverent, extremely interesting cabinet of books. Pop-up books (there’s that term, ‘pop-up’ for the 6th time). They’re a classic category of fragile preciosities that can neither be hardened for sharing nor made affordable to own them personally.  Yuni’s? (I began to doubt my initial hearing of the name for the labial wooden sheathes that wrap into book cases, shelving, seats, benches). Their Yunis have seeded spots where people converge to spend time with books. One affordance to mindfulness: You can’t grab the book, and plop it onto your buffet plate to read eventually, at a later date when you have more time/attention than now, because  you’re so busy stocking your mind’s feedbag, that you’ve no time to actually attend to any of the PDFs, bookmarks, or Coursera video lectures that beckon for a drop of my attention.

If you come to a space that crystallizes around Unis (that is surely its real name), it will introduce you to people who are looking intently at the insides of books. The valuable and interesting books can only be read on site. So, why have 2 books in your arms, when you can only read one at a time?  And that is the mindful-trigger: Take one at a time. Fit it into your fovea, not into your fists. And because the retina is as big as the retina (so have no fear of the aphorism that her eyes were bigger than her stomach). Your eyes are exactly as big as your eyes. And the Davols have invented, through exploring their intuitions, a way to seed more intense gazing in between the sheets of a cloth-bound stinky book.

At the shmooze before the start, I met a couple of analytically oriented people from a Bounce-y startup. I also met a Fidelity Innovation Catalyst, Mark, who stood out. At Fidelity for under a year, he knows well my counterpart at Fido, Eric Gold, their impressive behavioral economist. I’d recently lunched with Eric, where we both marveled at the parallels and differences between our two companies’ distinct approaches to design thinking. Before the conference was scarcely begun, I was introduced to the Chief Customer Experience Office (C-CXO), and he let me know he’s in contact with his peer at Intuit, Kaaren Hanson. I’m sure to see them again when they visit Silivalley this summer. Dayenu!

But wait, there’s more. Did I talk about meeting Roman, the founder of the dance company, Exit12? He told me that he’d re-connected with his balletic training after returning from duty as a marine in Fallujah. I am pretty sure that this was the very first time in my life that I was speaking to someone who could talk about Fallujah from personal experience. Obviously, up until now, I had yet to find a way to interact and befriend any of the people in our armed forces. But here I was talking to both a soldier and a dancer. Roman and I discussed mindfulness practices, in particular those taught by Pema Chodron. Pema says in her sounds-true audio book, Unconditional Courage, that some of her meditation students come from these war zones. They’ve been in Iraq and Afghanistan. And they’ve reported to her that mindfulness exercises help even in such a difficult and extreme environment.

By lunch, I no longer saw Felix Salmon. When I checked twitter, it was clear that he was embroiled with a significant critique of a longish FT article. So, he’d slipped away, perhaps had only come to check out the HighLine talk.

If embodiment is my take-away from GEL, the stage setting spotlighted the ways that the High Line inspires more organic, improvisational, collaborative urban development. I loved loved loved hearing about its inception, that Robert Hammond had moved to the West Village in the 90s, and was smitten with the iron husks of the rail lines in his sight. Yet, no one fought for their integrity, and Giuliani signed an executive order for their demolition in his last week in office. Jump ahead, to a whirlwind that has  sparked an incredibly fertile span of esthetic elaboration. The presumed cost ($100 Mil) and benefit ($900M) were wildly inaccurate. Yes, costs over-ran to $150M. But the development, so far, is many billions. Long ago (2005, I learned from Hammond), I accidentally wandered into a MOMA gallery that had various design experiments maquetted into little demonstration proposals. I didn’t recall one of Hammond’s examples from his talk: construct a 1.5 mile length lap pool. When it was just paper and foam core, it looked so inert, if still oddly enchanting for its allusive shape-shifting promise, to transform a RR bed into a neighborhood isthmus of repose from the city hustle. Since it’s been unveiled, even in embryo, I have hot-footed over there, often with my Park Slope mom. We walked it together the first week it opened, during its soft-launch before the official opening ceremony.  At that time, it went something like the MeatPacking area to 14th. And each time I’ve walked it since (last time, in the summer of ’11, we went en famille across the entire length, all the way to 30ish street) to encounter a kawai psychedelic theme park, or adver-park, since the the huge lollipops and the biomorphic mushrooms all bloomoing in Japanese pop-colors was sponsored by AOL. Oh, did I mention that the entire time I spent in NY was at an apt I found on airbnb, that directly looked out on the High Line at 23rd st?

Every aspect rocked my consciousness: the talks, the people in the audience, the dance performance, even the video inter-titles’ lovely biomorphic animations, exhibiting the blooming of subway seats as they self-organized into a flower form.

I have individual notes for some of the speakers, and for those who want the “even longer” version, click the links to see my notes for:

Back to Life theme

Robert Hammond – Tender history of the High Line. Starts with a logo, and currently extends to trying to engage the neighbors who have yet to directly benefit, viz, those who live in 2 housing projects right by the High Line.

Ben Kaufman – Quirky founder. It was during this talk that I began to notice how much flare this, and subsequent speakers, managed to broadcast via their sneaker creativity. Ben’s account of Quirky was energizing; even more exciting was learning that the weekly product review session was scheduled for that night, right down the street. After GEL ended, I biked over on a rental and watched Ben rule as the King in his court. The panel of knights sitting on both sides of Ben are expert in their user base, recognizing when a submission comes from an inventor who’s sold a lot of lemonade. The room was packed, easily 100+ people; some were inventors, others engineers or designers or critics. There was even a row of 5th graders. When a product was being evaluated, the scoreboard behind Ben showed the number of impressions a proposal had seen on their site, the number of click-throughs, and also the number & proportion of up votes by site visitors. The madcap dialog culminates in Ben’s question, Should X be a Quirky inventor? Then all present who are in favor raise their hands, and this last bit of data is synthesized into the decision process.

Rachel Shechtman of Story: She’s reinventing retail & uses a metric of “experiences per square foot.” Because she takes inspiration from a regularly published print magazine, the entire store morphs every 6-8 weeks. Pushing the metaphor to its logical implication, she also accepts advertorial placement, and recently landed a year long annual media buy with GE.

Zara Aljabri – Mode-sty. I haven’t been to a conference where a speaker wore a hijab. It was very impressive to hear how she described herself as a “conservative dresser.” Framed that way, I suddenly realized the person sitting next to me was a woman wearing long sleeves and pants suit. Once I learned the category, I saw modest dressers everywhere.

Liam Casey–  An Irishman who’s lived in China for 18 years, he runs PCH, a major source for some tightlipped American tech company. Kevin Kelly went over to visit with Mark Hurst last year, and they were so impressed that MH invited him to present. I loved hearing how he doesn’t speak Chinese, so he’s spent decades watching silent movies.

Friday, I was supposed to give a workshop in Waltham. I stayed up late Thursday night, watching the twitter feed of @sethmnookin, who reported from the block in Watertown where the 2 bombers were in a shoot out with the police. I woke up at 6am, took a cab to La Guardia. At 7:15, I checked in with Dan Ariely, who felt certain that the city’s angst would blow over by noon. (I later reminded him that he’s calibrated to Israeli coping styles; I felt certain that Boston was in a different state of panic.) At 7:50am, I handed back my plane ticket, and sat in the airport trying to reach a travel agent to reschedule. I watched the full plane load of people fly off. When the plane landed in Logan, all passengers were locked down in the airport until 6pm that evening.

When I left LGA at 8:30, I called a fellow Intuit-ive to see about joining her tour group. Since she was visiting Story, and I’d already biked over to check it out on Thursday, I pursued plan B, a walking tour of DUMBO.

Down under the Manhattan Bridge is now a popping nabe in Brooklyn. 15 years ago, a friend lived there, and the only amenity was a little bodega that sold beer and single sized packets of ramen, etc. During the tour, I met  fine people from all over. The founder of Infragistics, an art director from Calgary, a man from Moleskin, and a PM for the digital side of Marvel Comics. After wandering DUMBO til noon, I stopped off at Etsy, to see if a friend of mine was in. Although I sort of knew that he works from home on Fridays, it provided a perfect excuse to check out their office. Yep, they really do yarn bomb the pipes there.

Afterwards, I rented a Rolling Orange dutch style bike, and rode around Cobble Hill and Lower Park Slope. I made a return visit to Zuccotti Park, which I’d last visited on 11/18/11. That night, coincidentally, was the first time I spoke to a recruiter at Intuit.  I still laugh that this position came to me while I was hanging around Occupy Wall Street. Saturday, I biked up to the Guggenheim to see their delightful Gutai exhibit. This fluxus-inspired art movement from early ’60s Osaka packed a lot of fun into their work, as they struggled to break out of the confines of high art.

NY by bike is absolutely the right footwear to see the city.

BTW, this trip report (my first at Intuit) is inspired by having once been a fan of PARC’s intranet posts from Rich Gold. He would write one up after each incredible trip to a design conference. His reports have never been published, but reading them while I interned in Kris Halvorsen’s group back in the late ’90s was one of the more memorable perks. I will post photos of the event here but I want to get this up now. Because it’s really true that “Done is indeed better than perfect.”

Muir Woods Hike

On the -Friday after T-day, we left for Muir Woods at 8:30am, and didn’t leave the forest until 3;30 that afternoon.  We managed to hike the Dipsea Trail, up to the Ben Johnson Trail, and that leads into the back way of Muir Woods. Our twins were excited to make all sorts of naturalistic observations, and they commandeered me to write notes in my little book to record their observations.

When we got home that afternoon, I went and printed out a bunch of the photos that we’d taken.

On Sunday morning, they assembled a book of their adventure. Of course, I supported their logging and natural philosophizing, but it’s worth noting that the impetus to record, and then publish, was entirely theirs. The main ways I supported them was by quickly printing the photos so they’d have the materials in hand. Monday morning, on the way to their school, we stopped at a copy shop to make color copies, and I paid to have 3 books spiral “comb” bound, so they’d feel more like a book. They wanted 3 because there are 3 kindergarten classes at their school. They also put in a request that we translate the book into Spanish for the 4th kindergarten class, but I’ve stalled since I don’t know the word for “clubhouse.”

This trail site says the path is 4.35 miles; but the Hillside trail was closed, and I’m almost certain we hiked over 5 miles.

Cazadero Performing Arts Camp

For the 2nd year in a row, my kids + Miryam spent a week developing their skills in music, dance, capoiera, clowning around, kidding about, and more. I spend the week like a hound-dog all alone, until Friday evening, when I can drive up to join them. On Sunday morning, everyone showcases their new skills.

Note: If you’d like to watch this film clip in High Definition, just click the HD in the lower right corner, and it will bring you to vimeo to watch the movie in glorious excess of pixelage.

New this year: their Babba & Tapta joined the family circus for the week.

Monterey Market Great Pumpkin Patch

Sunday morning at the local market. Kids crawling over all the gourds. The huge pumpkin reminded me of the American economy: it was so vast and vibrant, it could be rotting at the top and still be an amazing work to behold.

I have declared default on the backlog. One year ago, we came back from visiting Italy and France, and I thought I’d “catch up.” Now, I’m just accepting that there’s no time like the present to post.

SF Habit Design Meetup 9/26

9/26 SF Habit Design Meetup: Leo Babauta (Zenhabits) & New Format
When: Monday, September 26, 2011 6:00 PM
Where: Parisoma 169 11th Street (at Natoma) SF, CA 94103

Blogging about simplicity
Zenhabits. Since 2007. 230k subscribers
Smoker; 70 lbs heavier; Deeply in debt

Nov 18 2005 quit date
Applied same principles to running
Started waking earlier
Failures v instructive
Learned thru forums
Created course. New one starting in October

Pick one as small as possible.
Don’t just dive into it. It was easy to quit for one dayr
U have to fully commit.
Set a date in the future. It’s a big deal. Write it down. Tell people about it.
If u can hold urself back it builds up
Only let urself do it for 5mins
Containing urself.

What effective means

Tried it wo holding myself back & then w
Creating habits is a skill
Some people are good at it

Started w one of the hardest

Start positive
Daily trigger
Easiest ones are once a day
Waking up, eating bkfast
Kim: picking one in the am seemed more effective
Much better

6 kids, one just started ucsb

At least 4 weeks before it becomes automatic
Longer is better. Bond stronger w more days. Also inconsistency undercuts
when the trigger random, it’s much more difficult to control

We have urges say procrastination
Urge to leave that task
Consider it a wave
Let it crest then it will go away
Urges to not do a habit. Watch that
Kim: meditation. 1 min after shower.
Trigger is a physical thing. What does “after” mean

BJ Fogg differs in advocating that u undertake lots of habits
17 new daily habits
Leo I have done more than one at 1x. BJ is habit black belt

Fail, adjust, iterate. Try and fail is great
It’s new info.
Wanted to floss. Some of the problems. Too tired
Make it a social thing. I told my habit class I failed
Switched to morning

Moved from Guam in summer 2010
Very American culture. Not very Asian. Lot of Catholicism
Zen is just simplicity and mindfulness I am not a Buddhist
Island culture. We r going to take r time doing things
Mom is German Irish & dad is native

How to deal w problems of others?
Sig other may not want u to change. Becoming vegetarian eg
How u communicate & how u ask for help

If they continue to resist just see it as their prob

I need u on my team. Formalize the support of 3 people

Joined forums

Opps for tech/mobile: Social is huge

I like yr idea of games, and found: Fitocracy.com

Replacement habit: now what do do?
Tracked what my triggers were
Tally w a pencil
Think of what you r going to do instead

How do you go from achieve a goal to habit?
We strive for outcome wo incorporating the habit.

Subgoal for longer goal

People say I am just going to do it but thats not enough

Enjoy the activity.

Is the course a support group or learning

Habitcourse.com. Early bird discount. Starts next week

What about individual differences.
Fail, adjust, iterate

If u only want to do weekdays or weekends go ahead & adjust

What about rewards incentives etc
Positive & neg feedback: heroin has +_ feedback
Going back has built in positive, & withdrawal has neg

Prob w incentives. Sometimes you can’t get it, eg buying a book
Neg feedback of Not doing in social settings

Common themes in excuses?

If u can’t find 5 mins, try 2. If not, try 1
Another prob is keeping going — hence social support
Motivation

Tech is double edged sword. Huge suck
Once u get on that pc u don’t notice anything

Eating this small bowl of food I love. Slow. Enjoy it rather tThan ignore
Savor by thich nhat hanh

Thinking habits r much harder to change
Mary yauch rubber band on one wrist switch to other wrist
Take it into the physical world where u can see it

mundanity of excellence

a footnote on Josh Kornbluth

Last night I heard Josh Kornbluth reading Howl, and other poems of Allen Ginsberg’s. Fans of both Josh & Ginsberg thronged Pegasus for this echt Berkeley event, curated by my new favorite culture engine, First Person Singular. I count myself more of a Josh than a Ginsberg aficionado, but the reading was still great fun. (Personally, whenever Howl comes to mind, I recall a snarky graffito from the men’s room in Widener Library: “Allen Ginsberg never knew the best minds of his or any generation.” ) In case you missed the event, a video clip of the last poem, A Footnote to Howl, can be seen here.

What makes me such a fan of Josh Kornbluth?

I started compiling some notes after watching Good For the Jews on the opening night at the Shotgun last February.

The Shotgun show exemplified Josh’s unique method of self-exploration. I’d also seen an earlier version of the Warhol show at the Contemporary Jewish Museum (April 2010). What once was microwaved now seemed slow cooked, full of depth and nuance.

The Warhol show was directed by David Dower, a sprinkler of theatrical pixie dust who began his collaboration with Josh’s Ben Franklin Unplugged. The Ben Franklin show was my Josh initiation as well, so we must go back to the mid-90s. [Sidenote: The theater, Zspace, is itself a fascinating incarnation of Richard Florida’s creative class to come. The studio was founded as a collective, associated with a database consulting group. Apparently, in the mid to late 90s San Francisco, the frothy tech scene enabled a bunch of hacker theater enthusiasts to bind themselves together into a consultancy large enough to subsidize/underwrite/coshare with a twinned theater project. An irony of Kohelet level intensity: During the dotbomb, the database chrysalis of the initial company was shed, leaving only the theater butterfly to survive to maturity.]

One of the few peers to Josh in the field of crafting a creative life would be Jonathan Richman. (My personal pantheon also includes Lynda Barry & Miranda July.) Jonathan Richman (or just, Jojo) also sends out rainbows of luminous insight and humor in his songs. Unlike Josh, his personal defense against the flood of attention he generates is inscrutably difficult. Josh’s interview with Jojo (Salon in 1996) could not have been tightened had it been copy-edited down by Samuel Beckett. The painful session of mit-sein is dually lonely, awkwardly honest, and (because Josh is recounting it) humorous.

I’ve been among the fortunate fans who’ve watched Josh grow up in public.

Two decades after college, he outed himself in Citizen Josh (2007), revealing that an incomplete had blocked him from finishing his BA. In true Kornbluthian style, (perhaps inspired by the Yiddish saying, “if you can’t go over, go under”), Josh transformed the spoken monologue into the very thesis that enabled him to finally finish at Princeton. (In the afterword to his book, Red Diaper Baby, he mentions that his writer’s block could only be overcome when he switched to speaking out loud, afterwards getting his spoken words transcribed.)

Quite recently, Rabbi Creditor & Josh co-created a course, entitled “”My Big Fat Jewish Learning.” The course was structured as a dialog between Rabbi Creditor and Yeled Kornbluth, in preparation for Josh’s upcoming bar mitzvah. The class attendees were invited to ride along, while Josh was called on to respond directly, in the moment, to the teachings covered.

Josh spins webs of associations into enthralling stories which crystallize into his own form of political engagement. I saw his collaborative geniality in full force after an early production of Love & Taxes (2005). Each performance was followed by themed discussion panels. The day I went, his real-life boss from Haiku Tunnel, Bob Shelby, discussed tax law. Bob Shelby said straight away that the one thing Josh never shows in Haiku Tunnel is that he was always extremely bright.

If you want to see how a discussion panel complements and contrasts with the singular voice of a monolog, here’s an interesting example from the February opening night Warhol.

Ringling Bros Conundrum

The guys got to see the Sunday matinee of the Ringling Bros, Barnum and Bailey Circus. If the greatest pleasure is savoring anticipation, they got the $100 worth of delight out of eagerly looking forward to going. They told one of their teachers that they were going to “the real circus next year.” At 3.5, “next week” may indeed be indistinguishable from a year away. We got to the Oakland Arena by noon, and one of the first hawkers of the program was overheard telling of how he’s been in the job for 13 years, and you really wouldn’t want to see how small his room was. Before the circus starts, ticketholders can go on to the floor of the arena, and meet the gymnasts, strong men, and see preliminary peaks of the upcoming acts. The strong smell of diesel-operated vacuums intensified the Big Top sensation. From the moment we arrived, until we left, the attention to sustaining intense stimulation impresses. Our boys loved the whole event, esp’ly the penultimate act, when a motorcycle rode up a tight rope right before our eyes. As we left, PETA advocates were handing out info about the animal cruelty. I asked if they consider the human performers “animal acts.” While the circus life isn’t all romance, for all sorts of animals, the hardships and struggles create an amazing outcome. For me, such suffering lacks a morally strong claim.

Afterthought: Buying tickets at GoldStar was no great deal (each $25/ticket was marked down to $13, but after tacking on fees, came back to $20@.) All the tickets that would be unsaleable if you knew their location must get dumped on the discounters. Since so many good seats were empty, we ended up sitting right in the 5th row, center stage. But next time, I’m just going to pay retail.

Legos before School

The boys have gone through a Lego explosion. I’m delighted to see that Yair’s obsession with Gehry-esque visions has now caught up with his capacity to build. I’d been worried that he was on the verge of becoming a manager for life, since he would describe his ambition to his brother, and have Beckett build the structure. But now he’s into manually crafting his own structures. (As a bonus, one of them quotes a ditty that traces back to the 19th century, since I recall hearing ink-a-bink from my great-grandmother, Nana, when I was probably under 3 years old.)

Morning Work Out

After a year of going to the gym every alternate weekday, our family’s starting to get in better physical condition. About once a month (or perhaps a little less often), I rally the team to visit the gym while their mom is working out. It’s fun to watch how excited they get running around.

High on Pescadero Beach

Here’s a clip of the guys climbing high, after spending the weekend in Butano, their favorite state park. Sundays make a great day to swing down to the beach on the way home. Look at these climbers:

Send in the Silly People

Tonight, at their best friend’s house for dinner, Yair orchestrated a show. His elaborate conceptions continue to amaze me, since he holds a very vivid sense of exactly how he wants things organized, with a clear sense of stage craft. The idea of “silly people” may be due to watching last week’s Berkeley Playhouse production of Oliver! Each act began with a brief prologue (pantomime knee play), with music sandwiched between. Our twins sat riveted through more than 2 hours of theater. Before it was over, B was so fascinated he went right up to the stage to get a closer look.

Messing Up

The guys can help make challah, muffins, and other baked goods. At the end of many dinners, their culinary instincts compel them to concoct “new recipes.” Experience has led me to steer them toward expressing their work, with the bricolage of left overs, splashing water and stirring in the pots soaking in the sink. One moment, I was not paying close attention, as they were quiet and happy, but when I looked in, they had covered their heads and faces in apple sauce. You can hear B say “last day” (instead of yesterday). It’s actually overly regular, since it’s natural to say “last week (or month).” Twins are renowned for coming up with their own dialects, and this idiomatic phrase has been one they have used for many last days. B is also wearing a Moscow t-shirt, gift of his Aunt Amanda, and it’s his particular favorite. This is evidenced by his desire to scrub it clean, rather than surrender it to the “wetter” and dryer.

After the 2nd Night

During Passover, we flew through so many places (a hotel on the East Side, Park Slope, New Haven, Scarsdale, and then for the last night, the Upper West Side). Here’s our arrival at Josine and Dandrew’s house, where they immediately made us feel so welcome.

Gorilla Games

At least since Thanksgiving, the Gorilla games have been one of the most enthralling ways to shift the twins’ imagination. Yair in particular can be almost instantaneously knocked out of a bad mood by evoking his inner baby gorilla. Here’s a clip of the guys chest thumping (B quite freq’ly likes to play the mommy gorilla to Y’s baby). The other game that keeps giving is also documented here, which involves piling up all the movable blankets, towels, and cruft into a huge pile for some sacred space.

Miryam’s book party at UPB

Years in the making, we finally published our new book, Experimental Arts in Postwar Japan: Moments of Encounter, Engagement, and Imagined Return. I am jesting, of course, since my role wasn’t even as demanding as a doula attending a 5 minute delivery. One consequence of Mir’s attention surplus disorder is that she steadily moved toward her goal, with scarcely an explicit moment of agonizing. Last night, it was a delight to celebrate with friends & colleagues at the University Press Books store.
There’s 2 video clips below. The one for family members is offered first, and showcases Yair’s interruptive delight in getting his mom to point to the place where his name is mentioned, in the book’s dedication:

I go back & forth on the extent to which children should be seen but not heard at adult events. It strikes me as old school (even anti-feminist) to partition family, self, and work into separate spheres. Yet I did dedicate my energies during the event to sweeping them up & keeping them outside. I didn’t think kids would be in the room, since the discussion is incapable of holding their attention, & bored children are prone to act out. So, I was mostly outside the room — Miryam’s RA, Alexa, willingly held my camera for the long video below. Now that I’ve watched this clip, my admiration is greatly boosted for the author’s ability to balance the importunings of our twins while sustaining her dialogue with Linda Williams:

Birthday Celebration

We kept hoping to hold their preschool birthday at a time when at least one representative from the East Coast family could travel to share in the celebration. It wasn’t possible to get the coasts to kiss, so here’s a highlight clip from today’s Birthday Circle. Upon completing the lovely ritual, the kids all ran outside and shared in bluebs and strawbs. I felt this frugivorous fare was perfect, yet there’s another philosophy that sweets (or at least whipped cream) is meet and fit for such a festive occasion. My concern: If cream is required for the 3rd birthday, by 18, the escalatory scale will require a fifth of Jack Daniels and an eightball to make the mood. No one ended up asking me, as the school has a policy that bars espresso drinks, beef jerky, and most other stimulants.

Birthday Celebrations

In the prime of my life: as my birthday began before 7am Beckett sang me a round of Happy Birthday.

In this clip, the whole family joins in to drip wax into the Chicago style pizza pie Miryam bought for my birthday party.

For the guys’ birthday (or is it birthdays?), we’re going to drive 4 hours North to jump around in the snow in Yosemite.

Gorilla Family

Took the guys to observe a gorilla troop at the SF Zoo, after they enjoyed reading the book, Face to Face with Gorillas. Although the day was a chilly 49 degrees, they must’ve spent more than 30 minutes watching the gorilla troop. I can recall watching the gorilla Jack at the Phoenix Zoo with my father, and it’s amusing to think that this pastime links at least 3 generations. (The SF Zoo has very nice footage of the one year old baby here, but I prefer the near 3 year olds below)

Thanks Given

We made a trek down hiway 1 to the Natural Bridges park, where Monarch Butterflies congregate for the winter. Just before we set out, Miryam bought an MP3 of Octopretzel‘s “I am a butterfly.” This lovely song’s associations include having first heard it at the open house when we visited their (then-future) preschool. Although Monarchs are renowned for swarming, the warm enough weather caused the flocks to diffuse, we only saw little handfuls at any one time. Still, as this song attests, even seeing one butterfly can change your life for the better.

Our approach on the return drive encapsulates a difference between the parents: I’d’ve opted for the faster (but much uglier) return route, but Mir’s preference won out. She clinched her case, as we walked back from splashing in the ocean (3pm), by saying “Hiway 1 at Sunset. C’mon!” The boys slept/dozed the whole trip up the coast, so we could talk and listen to World Music. In the evening, we visited friends, where the boys reprised their own musical outlook:

Learning to ride bikes

This is the 2nd week of bike riding, and they are confident enough in their skills to ride about 3 blocks, up a real hill, to reach the neighboring schoolyard. I realized this evening that the topology of the neighborhood actually enables them to ride 3 blocks without ever crossing a street (they do have to cross one street to reach the school). This clip highlights Beckett’s solicitude toward his brother– he’s very concerned that I do my utmost to spot Yair.

Making Music Together

Here’s a recent concert, as the boys sing one of their new favorites, Shalom Chaverim. Yair chants “We want more audience.” Getting in touch with their strong preferences and powerful opinions is a real growth experience for me. I now hear quite regularly, “Daddy, will you listen to me?” as their multi-tasking parent is ordered to mono-task. At the end of this clip, there’s a nice demonstration of how sweet they still manage to be, when B asks “I want my strap PLEASE.” It’s extraordinarily gratifying to raise kids who are more polite than I myself am, although their example has inspired me to behave better.

2 trips to school

Here’s two short trip clips (neither of which were taken by a driver while in motion):

The ride at the end of August shows their first step toward their post-doc (their pre-school is a feeder to some of the top colleges in the world). AT this point, they didn’t even know how good it was going to be:

The next clip is 6 weeks later [you might detect the extra facial hair and how their voices sound a little deeper, a tad closer to cracking]. As they are readying for school, I encouraged them to try out their new Halloween costumes– if there were any problems, I wanted to work out kinks before the night of trick &/or treating:

Riding the rails with 2 little hobos

Much time has passed without a post. The guys started preschool on 8/30, fly out to the East Coast for Rosh Hashanah, had a croupy sickness for the 7 days prior to Yom Kippur, and are thriving. Here’s a few words from someone else who has chosen to spend her cappuccino cash on BART tickets to amuse our twins:

Have you ever
But have you ever
touched the warm back of your child
through his T-shirt as he kneels
on the seat of the BART train
nose pressed to the glass

And you ride up, up, up
from the tunnel into the sky
sun setting over glimpses of the bay
And all around you, tired dark faces
slouch into the battered blue
upholstery while you are flying—
flying over the tracks

and all around you, the curiosity
“Mommy, is that the tracks?”
That’s the tracks, my angel
two simple hot rails
–no cross-beams like in your book–
pulsing through with this energy

and one day will you be rippled and grown
like that blond man with his 3-day growth
of rough and the little hairs on his arms
and where will I be then; and have you ever
wondered if your child will find someone
to love him after you’re gone
as much as you do

and have you ever
burned through your days so
that you could hold his solid small hand
on the escalator, that magical monster
and watch him as he puts
the ticket
into the
exit gate;
listened
to the noise
it makes
as it sucks the ticket down
ticket down
down.

Five Years of Twins

We celebrated their 2.5 birthday on July 23rd, and this clip captures the first round of candles in the birthday peaches. We re-enacted it once more, since twins do every thing with twice the fun. I can’t believe how much fun they are now that they’re talking, singing, drawing, and arguing with us.

A new song, kind of different, and funny

The boys have been going to Music Together for about 6 months, and they both love musical expressiveness. Yesterday, Yair took a new toy (a gift from our neighbor Mateo), and imaginatively transformed it into a guitar. He is so fascinated by stringed instruments. This video clip captures his announcement that he is going to sing a new song, that’s kind of different, and funny, but it ends before he broke into the snake song. I wasn’t sure he had more than the intro patter down, but then he sang “Snake, snake snake snake, snake snake, snake snake snake.” Beckett joined in for the next round of songs, which were captured, but not (yet) uploaded.

Playing around with language

Beckett and Yair have been exposed in the last few weeks to English, Japanese, Spanish, and Hebrew (and maybe other nanny dialects from their Totland adventures). In this clip, they are playing around with something that neither their mother or father can quite make out. (It’s not quite Poto and Cabengo, but it is hard to decode.)

Playing with Jet Lag

In the first week of our return, the boys have been waking up around 1:30 to 2AM, and then they run around the house for a couple of hours. Here (at almost 4am), they fool around pretending to fall asleep in the middle of eating.

More video of Japan trip

Here’s some more video, which I considered just linking to, but realize it’ll be easier for the 3 readers of this blog if it’s right here. The first clip shows the boys demonstrating their savoir faire about drinking after we had breakfast in our neighborhood noodle shop.

Yair’s a shameless flirt. He runs through his improvisational repertoire of antic behavior to impress a bunch of school girls waiting in front of Le Floret in Harujuku. The reason we initially stopped was to watch the man ‘way up high’ (they love observing window washers rappel the faces of shiny buildings).

Footage of their polite greetings to the Colonel, Murakami Haruki Sanders

Quick thoughts on Japan

Walking around, I often just think: Here is one solution for enabling millions and millions of people to live together.

Jane Jacobs argued that short blocks are better, because they provide multiple pathways. The block size in Tokyo is incredibly small, so the streets are fascinating labyrinths, and only once did I hit a dead end.

Shibuya neighborhood is almost understandable, but I have not even cracked the subway station. In part that is because we have to navigate the station like a Super Mario Brothers animated character, shuttling our stroller to different elevators, to take 3 distinct elevators in order to exit.

Technically, my explorations feel more like archeology (observing buildings, roadways, infrastructure) than anthropology. The one time I went out at night (Weds), I saw a totally different world in Shibuya. Most of our treks occur from about 6 to 10am, and then we do daytrips, but usually by 7:30pm, we’re back home.

The auditory and visual quality of Tokyo is comparable to 1990’s web page design. Blaring, dazzling, massively crammed together. The wabi of Japanese esthetic does not extend to sound; this city is spam sonified. There are loudspeakers, tissue handers, and all kinds of auditory feedback being shouted from machines, crosswalks, and advertisers.

Many of the buildings are covered in ceramic/tile. The chitinous hard, inorganic quality of this surface contrasts strongly with the Berkeley wood shingle esthetic. Perhaps the traditional ceramic roof tiles (see flickr e.g.) just crawled over to the sides of the building. The shapes of the buildings evoke robots, often in subtle mecho manners, but on at least two occasions, I’ve seen explicit allusions in architecture of Iron Man or a transformer (here’s someone else’s discussion of the latter.)

I am continually reminded of the line from a Joni Mitchell song “they paved paradise, and put up a parking lot.” Spent one Saturday in Roppongi Hills, at Mohri Garden, and the amount of green was only 24 feet wide, and maybe 6 to 10 times as long. This tiny postage stamp of grass was surrounded by massive amounts of shops (where they charge more than “a dollar and a half just to see” [trees]. I felt as if I were on a space ship, where tiny vestiges of biology crop up, but only in carefully contained curio bottles.

In over a week, I’ve not learned the interface to the light controls in our apt. Complex dependencies mean that some buttons affect the behavior of the other buttons. This fascination with complexification must generate a lot of UI nightmares (or, for the right crowd, delighted all-nighters studying hardware manuals.)

The amount of particularity/individuality/idiosyncrasy crammed into every corner of Tokyo is mindblowing. A lot of this comes from quoting thematic cliches (Hollywood images, rock stars, life guards, motorcycle gangs, and more). The diversity is amazing, and the intense energy pumped into each little crooked crevice inspires awe in the endless creative pulse of people.

Japanglish is one consequence of this pursuit of particularity. If people were content to all wear the same US university t-shirts, there’d be no need for endless improvisation in generating nearly American sounding schools with odd bits of words.

Photos of our explorations are viewable here

Japan, first exposure

The eleven hour flight was not a cake walk, but since over half the passengers were native Japanese, it did serve as an appetizer of things to come, as our boys got to play with little Japanese kids. (Note: The quarantine pressure felt pretty high, until we actually were in the country. To see a clip of that masked moment, go to this link).
I promised Miryam that I would conform to the socks & shoe culture here, but I had to laugh when I saw our twins, running around Narita airport, barefoot. It was apparently so shocking that a policeman asked to see my documentation, and he kindly waited until Miryam finished renting our cell phones to ask her for our papers, when I could only stare dumbly at his promptings. We are having an amazing time, even though our boys move from inside to outside so rapidly that they are being asked to change from shoes to no-shoes up to 50 times in a day.

Riding Bikes for the first time

Here’s the boys, decked out in their Mickey Mouse t-shirts (pre-vintage-ized). The shirts arrived yesterday as souvenir gifts from their Aunt Amanda’s visit to DisneyWorld. They don’t know the Mouse™ yet. But, in their rumble gear, they were very keen to jump on the bike, and ride for the first time in their 2 1/4 years.

Little Rock Stars

Here’s a shot of the boys wearing their sunglasses. Yair does his Mynah bird trick, which drives him to try out every new sentence he hears. I say something like “Quantum indeterminacy appears to undermine naive epistemological assumptions” and he agrees, saying “Quanto immertimisy pears to mine nine pistolo-cal sumps”

Summer’s near

Yesterday was the first day the boys took to the streets in shorts.
The proportions of 2-year-olds are so distinctive that their appearance in shorts amuses me. (Miryam has pointed out that when Yair touches the top of his head, his arm is straight, not bent at the elbow.) Footnote on the smeared faces: That’s streaks of frozen blueberry juice, rather than dueling scars, on their faces.

Happy Birthday Poppop

Yesterday, the boys called their Poppop and sang him happy birthday. (Typically, when they sing happy birthday, they say it’s for Poppop.) So last night, I pushed some candles into an orange, and they sang into the phone. Today was the real birthdate, and having had so much fun yesterday that they wanted to do it all over again. During this clip, I tried to phone their Poppop, but even though we didn’t reach him, the boys sang their hearts out for the camera.

Two sons, 4 questions

At the first night seder at their Babba and Sabta’s, Beckett fell asleep before the guests arrived. Yair rebelled against singing anything on demand (although he did lightly sing it at the table once most eyes were off him). Here are 2 clips capturing each wise son’s unique version. Beckett sang his rendition on the train ride up to New Haven, and Yair sang it on Friday for the camera once we mobilized a little reverse psychology.

Dinosaurs at the Orange House

Here’s a brief clip of one of their favorite activities, while their Nana is in town.

St Patrick’s Day call

The boys know their great-grandparents from their cousin Denise’s wedding, and they always look at photos of Gran & Poppop from that weekend. On St. Patrick’s, I had them phone up to celebrate the twinkling of Irish they inherited.

Day at the races

This is a clip of the guys at their Friday morning play group. They’re off to the horse races with their buddy Zev, who has the jockey posture down to an art.

Hamantashen

Miryam made her very first batch of hamantashen, and here’s the movie of the boys eating them for the first time. Toward the second half of this vignette, the troops rebel and demand more more more. What I didn’t know til later was that Miryam had coaxed them with unlimited spoonfuls of jelly when they were helping her cook these. Also note: Miryam peeled off Beckett’s dermabond on Sunday, and while his forehead still has a red line, it’s scarcely noticeable.

Water works

Here’s a brief clip of the boys playing at the sink. Beckett’s dermabond started to peel a little, and because we were concerned he might pick at it, we put a bandage over the glue. Yair wanted to have a bandaid too (he sometimes just calls it a ‘sticker’). They’ve gotten many positive reviews of their matching boo-boos, although Beckett’s got a Purple Heart and Yair’s is more a certificate of honorable comportment.

Beckett required “stitches” on Weds

While playing at Habitot, Beckett fell on a wooden toy box and cut his head open. He was not crying when I took him to the doctor, who explained that she was out of practice with suturing, and that the cut was deep enough that it would require perhaps 2 stitches. Beckett got booked at a little private clinic about 20 miles from home, and Miryam took him over to get fixed up. The doctor there used Dermabond (crazy glue for small cuts). I had the impression Dermabond was crazy expensive, but the linked site, from 2000, says that it’s “the only FDA-labeled and commercially available adhesive in this country and costs approximately $24 a vial (12 vials per box).” I guess it’s somewhat expensive to stockpile (maybe it’s up to $500 for a case these days), but it would still be useful to have some of this on hand. If it were just my own injury, I don’t think I’d have a problem with over the counter cyanocrylate. I will It took a while to upload pictures of B’s newly sealed forehead, since my being a Dad interfered with documentation. (Note: I don’t have a handy way to share photos, so I just took the shots I had and turned it into a little video clip)

Brotherly Love

This little clip shows the twins learning to take turns. Here, they take turns trying to bite each other.

Playing in the Rain

In this very rainy weekend, the boys had a lot of fun splashing in puddles. Here is a little shot of their leaf racing (a sport which my brother and I loved to engage in when we were in grade school).

Berkeley Bowling Alone

Sunday was the last day that I took care of the boys by myself, while their Mom was on the east coast visiting their newly minted cousin, Benjamin. Friday was a big pizza party, Saturday required more support because they were starting to be clingy, and Sunday, while still a lot of fun, was tempered by the intermittent migraine I felt due to the sleep deprivation. Here’s footage of the guys shopping with me at the Berkeley Bowl, first at the fish counter, and then while we’re trying to check out. (You might notice that Beckett has a black eye. The week before, while feeding the ducks at Aquatic Park, he slipped and bumped his cheek bone on a rock. It took a few days for the bruise to really build up, and it’s already subsiding by this time).

The 2 year Bubble

The boys turned 2 this Friday. On Sunday, they went to Gymboree to celebrate a peer-ling’s birthday (since all the kids in Miryam’s mom’s group have nearly the same birthdate). Party favors included a bottle of bubbles, and this is the first time the boys succeeded in blowing their own bubbles. The sweaters they’re wearing were made by their Nana, and this was their first chance to wear them out in the world.

Art for MLK day

The twins made playdough birthday cakes on MLK day, to honor Martin and in anticipation of the next day’s impending inauguration. (It is really a joy to think that for them, the first president they are aware of, call out to, recognize the image of, and say hi to is Obama). Footnote: Miryam uploaded this video, and it is her maiden voyage playing with QuickTime like a Pro.

Going to the zoo

We went back to the Oakland Zoo, for the first time since “skyride” became our watchword. The boys saw ducks (interlopers while the flamingos were off-stage), giraffes, tigers, chimps and gibbons. Here’s a brief shot of their view of the chimps:

2nd new year of ’09 starts today

Uncanny to find myself 2/3 of 69, or twice 23, and surely I’d say I’m in my mid-life, when no one in my extended family has, to my knowledge, lived past 92 (so far, that is, although my maternal grandparents and both my parents are alive and well). I woke up this morning to listen to Beckett and Yair sing to me “happy birthday” and this video captures their eagerness to generalize the song to the animals in their puzzle.

What do Dads read?

Having kids has reduced the amount of time I spend lying about reading. I cancelled our subscription to the New Yorker during their first year. Still, there’s times where I’m changing diapers, or waiting for Yair (it’s always Yair) to go to sleep, when I continue my audible book habit.

Here’s where I’ve put my list of my favorite books of the year.

Merry Go Round

The Tilden Park merry go round was open this weekend. Yair was specifically begging Miryam to go back to the horsies & the music. This is the first clip I’ve ever ‘composed’ by editing: I grabbed a snip of their first reaction from one video, and pasted that onto the clip of their first go round. They rode the carousel 3 times before we went home. That night, we were mobilizing the troops to go out to a party, and Yair insisted that if we were going to bother to put on his shoes and ride in the “toot-toot” (car), then the only logical place to go was back to the Merry Go Round.

SF Science Museum

I wasn’t the only person who had the idea to take the kids on 12/24 to the celebrated new Science museum in SF, built by Renzo Piano, with many green touches. The boys really loved the aquarium, which was my reason for taking them.

Reading before bed

The twins sat on Miryam’s lap, looking at their picture book of giant trucks. For over a month, one of their favorite books has been “I STINK!” Yair in particular loves garbage trucks, and runs to the window whenever he hears a rumble. How to capture the way he pronounces this talismanic word, something like “Babby guck.” Another aspect of their interaction style is captured here, showing Yair’s didacticism. He’s adopted a habit of repeating many observations to Beckett, so that his little older brother can be kept abreast of the breaking news. They’re sort of fighting here, with all the methods and tactics practiced by Curlie, Moe and Joe.

Pop pop pop

The boys dive in to share their mom’s popcorn. The measure of maternal love is captured in how Miryam willingly shares her food with her little Panda bears:

Breakfast, round 3

Breakfast has evolved: lately, I just fill a bowl with puffed wheat, cut up a banana, adulterate the mix with Splenda, and then pour milk over it. Once I sit down, Beckett pulls his chair up near the side, and Yair moves inside my knees to get direct access, where he eats standing up. Then, three spoons take turns poking at my (really, OUR) cereal bowl. The finale is when the bowl’s nearly empty, and then they shout “SIP! SIP!”

Building blocks

Before bedtime, the guys have lately taken to playing a game of stacking blocks. Miryam observed that there’s something magical about the cylinders, which are the preferred item for stacking. Both of them try to hoard these at the start, perhaps because the first time one or the other of them succeeded, it was with this magical shape. Their last game is “clean up”, which Yair in particular devotes himself to with gusto. One footnote for the “making of the DVD” : The flip camera’s screen was damaged on our Thanksgiving trip, so I can generically point toward the objects of interest, but can no longer use this to focus, zoom, or even be sure that the camera is pointed at the right place.

Thanksgiving on the Beach

For the 2nd year in a row, we spent Thanksgiving at Steep Ravine, between Muir Woods & Stinson Beach. The boys arrived and were agog at the ocean before their eyes, and in this little clip, their natty little prep school uniforms show off their T-day threads. We arrived in time for lunch in the camp site with friends. (Our original plan, to camp out, like last year, was whittled down to a more manageable daytrip, after Miryam told me that the coldest night of the year before had been the first night we camped here in 2007.) I tried to take a panorama shot. In the background you can see the boys’ grandparents, Babba and Tapta, who won the prize for being super troopers, and climbed down to the beach with zeal.

Don’t touch that alarm– oh!

Miryam and I brought Beckett and Yair to the library so that they could get some extra books about firemen. They had a great time, running about glomming onto everything they could put their mitts on. There’s one place I tried to belatedly persuade them not to touch, the emergency exit:

Challah Time

There’s a book that the boys have fallen in love with. Just before shabbat started last night, I read it to Yair, while Beckett was out with his mom shopping for new clothes.

Flying with Pegasus (in a bookstore)

I spent a half hour this evening with the twins, at the local Pegasus bookstore. I tried to find a new title for them, but nothing seemed completely compelling (and to be honest, I only shop the discounts, so my sons may blame me someday for depriving them of first run books.) Still, the guys had a good time running around, and they demonstrated that almost every other children’s book has a duck in it somewhere.

Breakfast Mess, round 2

This morning, I didn’t try to offer American style continental breakfast, but when my back was turned, I heard this waterfall of flakes pouring out onto the floor. The bag of Heritage Flakes was nippable from where Beckett stood, and he pulled the bag down onto the floor. Amazing that he managed to completely empty the bag (a purely random process, such as a hurricane, would spill a lot, but would also leave some of the cereal still in the bag).

Moving up to the table

I tried out giving the boys their own bowls of cereal, since the system we’ve used to date is quite cumbersome: I fill my bowl with Kamut Puffs, pour milk over it, and then sit between the two of them, each armed with a spoon (“poon”). They spear a few bites of cereal, and I assist, knocking off excess clusters when they load their spoon with more cereal than would fit inside an empty pumpkin. The results show that they still have a ways to go before they can be left alone. This clip also captures Beckett’s signature technique, of bringing the pie hole to the pie, bending down to hoover up flakes.

Phones and digital cameras

The guys’ favorite toys are cellphones and, recently, a small digital camera. When I was growing up, there was a public service announcement titled “like father, like son” that warned (in its pre-PC terms), if you smoke, your children will absorb that habit in emulation.

Boys bouncing around

The guys are so rambunctious these days, and most of the time, it’s an unalloyed joy to watch them celebrate life. The first video is a brief clip of them bouncing about before bedtime tonight. The delight they exuberantly express outstrips the Energizer bunny’s oomph by light years.

Inevitably, the explorations they undertake with such zeal lead to scrapes. This little video shows Yair just after waking from his nap the other day, when he was still in a somber mood, and I needed to find some way to cheer him up. I played the song “Mil Heridas”, which is a favorite of his. The meaning of the title is “a thousand wounds”, and since he sports a scar on his cheek that is but one of the thousand little owies, ouchies, onkuses and conkuses, the song is aptly chosen to capture his own little battle with the physical world.

Boys commentary at the end of wedding

We were at the Crane Mansion for a wedding on Sunday, and at moments, you can catch some of the spectacular view of the rolling green grounds and the beach in the distance. At the end of all the dancing and celebration, the guys had imbibed so much language that they had to imitate all the babbling that they’d heard from others throughout the day. It really seems they are on the verge of the linguistic explosion, since they learned scads of new words in their week on the East Coast

Playing in Park Slope

We visited Park Slope, and got to experience some of the allures and delights that keep the strollers rolling there. First, their Nana shared some soup with the guys at Sweet Melissa’s patisserie:

Then, we took the boys up to the 3rd Street playground, and I got to observe the way life occurs for the burgeoning under-5 population, while Yair ran about, and his older brother slept:

Dinner at Joel and Nira’s

We had a Rosh Hashanah dinner in Connecticut, and this little slice of the pie was shot by Matthew’s girlfriend Bridget (who turns out to be a triplet!)

Twenty months old today

Every day, Beckett and Yair play with more assuredness, babble more coherently, attend to projects with greater complexity. They move chairs about the house to enable themselves to crawl to every nook that was just weeks ago inaccessible to their curiosity. It’s quite fun to watch, and in this video, to listen to the way they play and keep a constant stream of syllables to express their interests.

He ain’t hungry, he’s my brother

Tonight, Yair sat at the dinner table longer than Beckett, so that when the latter vroomed back to the table, Yair devoted himself to feeding his older brother. Frequently they each get deflected from performing a task (such as eating or brushing their hair) when they have the chance to do it instead to their sib. Yair is especially prone to this. Their tendency to reflect onto the other reminded me of Ramachandran’s discussion of mirror neurons, which he claimed were central to learning many complex behaviors.

Among the Redwoods

We spent Friday and Sat night in Butano State Park (according to the ranger, the name “Butano” may have meant “friendly gathering place” among the Ohlone). We shared great meals with friends who camped at contiguous sites. The twins really enjoyed the days under the redwood canopy, although the chilly nights collided with their own croupy colds to make for fitful sleep. After 2 days in the forest, we stopped at Pescadero Beach and the boys actually stepped into the surf. After Labor Day, they had learned the new word “seagull”, and so they were delighted to see their old chums again at a new beach.

Second week of “school”

Beckett & Yair have been going to a little school two mornings a week, and they really love it. Miryam and I both dropped them off today, and you can see how they are so easy in the new space. According to the teacher, Yair is learning to be ‘more gentle’ with the other kids.

Dancing in the park

Albany does a fine job of competing with El Cerrito for the hipster breeding ground.

Labor Day at McClure’s Beach on Pt Reyes

Miryam mobilized the family for a Labor Day trip. We drove out to Pt Reyes during the boys mid-day nap, and they awoke just as we were pulling in to park about a half mile from the Beach. Docents had set up binoculars for viewing the Tule Elk, that majestically sat on a neighboring hill. The twins hiked out to the beach, and then, rather than run into the roaring ocean, they played in the little pond that pooled the fresh water stream about 50 yards from the surf.

Playing in the backyard

Here’s the boys playing right before bedtime. They’re no longer wearing their day clothes, and in the soft light of sunset, they cavort on their slide before getting wrapped in pj’s. Last night, they took their first “walk around the block”, running on their own steam, with one parent playing defense for each tot. They were so psyched after that walk that they couldn’t go to sleep until around 9pm (even though they were put to bed at 7:30). If you look closely, note that Yair’s curls were shorn in his 2nd ever haircut. Since his hair grows a lot faster than Beckett’s, he was the only twin to get a hair cut on Friday.

The spritz of seltzer

The twins are recovering from hand foot and mouth (very tempting to shorten it to ‘hoof and mouth’). Although Beckett is still running a fever tonight, we were able to take them to dinner and watch them wolf down a few bites of burrito bowls. Miryam took this video of the boys’ reactions to drinking seltzer water: Their gestural double takes on the sizzling spritzy feeling made me laugh. The mouth full of surprise didn’t stop them from drinking more. At the very tale end of the clip, there’s a shot of me as a less than laid back dad, when I spot Yair about to crawl over the top of the booth.

History of Berkeley on NPR

Here’s a discussion of the history of Berkeley, with the local historian Charles Wollenberg, who has recently (Jan ’08) published a book at the UC Press, titled “Berkeley: A City in History.” The biggest surprise for me in this talk was learning that the tree lined streets of North Berkeley were engineered by a 19th century real estate developer. Not mentioned in the history, but surely worth noting, is that even before the Free Speech Movement, a Cal student named Fred Moore staged a hunger strike against US military involvement in 1959.

Yogurt Park

To celebrate Hiroshima Day, we took the guys to have their first frozen yogurt. For the most part, we aim to feed them fruits and vegetables (and a smattering of slaughtered protein), while steering clear of the hard stuff (intense sweeteners, salti-fiers, etc). It’s reasonable to suppose that the natural tastes are more than rewarding enough, and that exposure to the crack versions of food will perhaps undercut their appreciation of the way foods naturally taste. But I have myself only belatedly signed up for the “Soda free summer”, and eat so many confections of the agro-business that would be taboo for their innocent palates. Today, the twins tasted their first frozen yogurt.

Hobos Dancing in the Homestead

My friend Gideon visited with his fiancee, Liz, and the twins were fascinated to watch him make music. They begged him to sing a song or two. Beckett took time to refuel with banana bites in between the dancing frenzy, and Yair mesmerized the wooden snake that came recently from Chinatown.

The Video Flip

Yair and Beckett are playing in their stroller. Tuesday afternoon, Yair fell and scraped his face, but it looks worse than he feels. [The little video camera, the Flip, is celebrated for making video super simple. This is the first video I made using a flip, but in spite of the so called easy-peasy interface, I don’t believe this has sound.]

Sniffing the Flowers in the Morning

The guys are wearing the blue sweaters knit for them by their Nana. They’re playing in the backyard. Their biophilia gets so excited at times that they can scarcely control themselves: When they see a cat, their squeals of joy give the ‘gato’ a little warning, but plants have less chance to run away. But once the babies are told to be “Gentle”, they sort of understand how to modulate their enthusiasm, and they know instead to sniff rather than smack the plants.