The unexpected rewards of fatherhood.

Fatherhood comes with many rewards and, it must be said, responsibilities. Curiously, and unexpectedly, in some ways, it also seems to come with a biological reward: better health. A very large study of 138,000 men by the AARP, concluded that men who had fathered children, were 17% less likely to die of cardiovascular disease than men who had never done so.

Rather unflatteringly, researchers compared this health effect, to the benefits of owning a dog. Both share in common a simple mechanism: caring for another. It seems that having someone to care about may bring blessings, other than the immediate rewards that come with expressing such care.

The research did not express any conclusions on whether this effect depended on the number of children in anyway, but was expressed in terms of childless or not childless.

Of course, this effect may be no more than another effect altogether: the ill health that might cause a man to be infertile. So, what we might be seeing here, might not be a positive effect of fatherhood, at all, but a negative effect of the inability to father a child. Either way, it does suggest that, in this narrow respect, fathers are healthier than non-fathers. I find it interesting, for it does suggest some kind of positive selection process for better health in the reproductive system itself. Perhaps evolution hasn’t come to as much of a halt, as many people seem to believe (in truth it is, if anything, faster than before, due to new selection processes at work...not all of them beneficial).

Anyway, this research cheered me a little. As the father of three sons, perhaps they bring me another kind of reward, other than the obvious ones inherent in parenting. If so, thank you to my Three Musketeers! (and to my wife for providing them.)

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here:http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at:http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is athttp://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

My new Bacon Number.

Idle curiosity prompted me to go to the Oracle of Bacon – which is a Bacon Number calculator – and check my name in its database. I was rather surprised to see that my new Bacon Number is 2 (if documentaries and TV shows are allowed).

A Bacon Number is the distance between a person, and Kevin Bacon, the Hollywood actor. Conventionally, it is calculated using feature film appearances, but there is an extended version that takes into account TV documentaries and other TV shows. Under the extended version, my Bacon Number is just 2. The reason for this is because I appeared in a TV show with Mark Dolan, the British TV presenter called The World’s Cleverest Child and Me. He, in turn, appeared in a show in 2011 entitled X-Men First Class 35 mm Special, with Kevin Bacon, himself. (That would mean that Mark Dolan’s Bacon Number would be 1).

Of course, Ainan’s Bacon Number would also be 2 – so too would my wife’s and my other two sons Fintan and Tiarnan. We all have a Bacon Number of 2, if documentaries are considered.

This situation tells us more about Hollywood and the TV and film industry than it does about us, however. It is very clear from this, that the film world is very small indeed – and highly interconnected. Because we have appeared in a few shows, that is enough to put us very close to Kevin Bacon, in terms of professional separation (shared projects).

The only way for my Bacon Number to get lower, now, would be to work with Kevin Bacon himself. That, however, I cannot imagine being likely. After all, what project would bring us together? We shall see if such a thing ever happens.

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here:http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at:http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is athttp://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

Decoding the piano.

Music tinkles throughout our house, from the piano that had long sat idle, until recently. Ainan has taken to playing music, on its black and white keys. This, however, is a bit of a surprise.

Five years ago, when Ainan was six years old, we tried to introduce him to the piano. We secured for him a piano teacher, of Chinese descent. For several months, Ainan duly took piano lessons. However, he chafed under the regimen. He didn’t like the order of it, what he perceived as rigidity and repetition. He became uncooperative towards the lessons. In due course, we stopped inviting his teacher because it had become clear that the relationship was not working. Ainan was unwilling to learn in the style that was being imposed. He rebelled against it, in his own, quiet way...of simply not doing what was asked.

We found this a surprise at the time, since Ainan liked to compose his own tunes on the piano, even at that early stage. Perhaps that should have been a clue to us as to his real interest: he wasn’t, then, interested in the mechanics of piano playing, but in the art of composition. Had his lessons focussed on the latter and attempted to evoke that behaviour, perhaps we would have had better results and more cooperation from him. Unfortunately, we didn’t come to that understanding then.

So, it was a great surprise to me, to find Ainan playing the piano, on his own, in the front room, a few weeks ago. The tune was complex, evocative and somewhat elusive. It really surprised me that he was able to play such a tune, after five years of not touching the piano.

“What is it?”, I asked.

“It is the music to Portal 2.”, he said, matter of factly.

I understood then, what that meant. Ainan had reconstructed the music to the videogame, by “reverse engineering” it, on the piano – using his ear, to judge which notes were to be played, in which order. I said nothing, but this fact quietly impressed me – for it said one thing, clearly: he had to have a clear memory of the music in his mind, whilst he did so, for the PS3 player was in another room, quite far away, and could not be heard from the piano. Ainan was expressing his memory of a piece of music, through the piano, by playing it, in real time...without any lessons more recent than five years ago.

A few days later, I heard more family music playing. It was Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven. Ainan played both hands (as he had with Portal), different notes on each, rendering Moonlight Sonata accurately.

Again, I was struck by what he was doing. He was taking an internal memory of a piece of music, to the piano and reconstructing it on the keyboard – then playing it, in real time, with both hands as they should be – without any music to guide him, for none could be played near him. Furthermore, Ainan has never learnt to read music, so he was not playing Moonlight Sonata from the page...and, indeed, there was no music to play it from.

All of this struck me as very revealing of who Ainan is. He would much rather work out the piano for himself, than be taught how to do it. When we tried to have him taught, he rebelled – but when we left the piano alone, quietly, in a room...he eventually found it, sat at it and began to play.

Ainan enjoys the act of autodidacticism. He would rather teach himself, than be taught. He would rather decode the piano and how it works and is played, on his own, than be taught how to do it. This act, embodies his profoundest nature, very well. In seeing him play the piano, without prompting, or lessons, we are seeing Ainan at his truest, deepest, self.

This recent development reminds me of how Ainan taught himself computer programming when he was six years old. He also reverse engineered it. He sat down at a computer keyboard and typed in statements that he thought might represent VBS (Visual Basic), commands. He watched what the computer did as a result and learnt, thereby, what each phrase did, and how the computer responded. He kept on typing and trying phrases and syntax, until he had, overtime, reconstructed the programming language, for himself and deciphered how it worked. He did this without any programming lessons – he just worked out how VBS worked, on his own. Thus, it is with the piano, recently: he has simply decoded it for himself.

Seeing how he learns, and how he teaches himself, I do wonder at the necessity and value of traditional education. Ainan’s achievements show that a child can teach himself essentially anything, on his own, by trial and error and experience of the thing itself. Ainan also shows himself to be rather better than a typical child, his age, at learning. Could it be, that traditional education is not helping people as much as it should? How is it that Ainan’s self-directed tinkering, can be superior in outcome – as it typically is, with him - to all that careful inculcation and “well-crafted” traditional lessons?

The lesson here is that some children, at least, are able to learn without the aid of traditional schooling. Indeed, as Ainan shows, in some cases, such children PREFER to learn without the aid of traditional schooling and find traditional schooling to be an encumbrance against which they rebel.

I am happy that Ainan has rediscovered the piano. I am happier still to note the way that he has done so. I am left, now, however, with a conundrum: having seen him play the piano on his own, should I encourage him to get lessons...or should I continue to leave him to his own devices? Would he now be responsive to tuition, or is it his own interest that propels him and propels him alone?

For now, I will let him tinker on, in his own way. In the meantime, I will ponder the question of whether to intervene, or not.

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here:http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at:http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is athttp://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)