Jonathan's blog

Last Thursday was Elliot's first practice for his Little League coach-pitch baseball team. I didn't get to go because I was sick (I'm still recovering some kind of stomach virus). Here's the rules:

1. Games will be three innings in length no new inning shall start after 8pm 2. Scores will not be kept. Scorebooks are intended to be used for track batting orders and field position assignments. 3. Kids playing at the pitchers position in the field are to wear batting helmets. 4. All kids play in the field you may position them using an extra infielder a second and extra outfielders. 5. One at-bat for a team is considered complete when every player on the team has batted one time through the order. Outs are not counted 6. Parents may position themselves behind the catcher to facilitate in returning the ball to the pitcher on pass balls to speed play. 7. Runners are to advance one base on infield hits and are to remain at the base they advanced to on throwing errors or overthrows (no advancement). 8. Hits over the outfielders head or in the gap should be played as normal baseball rules allowing the batter to advance as far as he/she can go. It is recommended the batter be held if part of the advancement is because of throwing errors in trying to relay the ball back to the infield. (Use best discretion) 9. 5 year olds are encouraged to start in the outfield until acclimated to the hit balls to avoid injuries. Some players may be advanced enough to waive this guideline. 10. Encourage all players to play all positions over the course of the season. It is permissible to start the same kids in the same positions in multiple games to get the feel of playing as a team and then moving the kids around beginning the next inning. 11. Keep the pitch count to a 10 pitch maximum at which time a walk is issued to the batter. 12. Kids playing catcher must wear catching equipment. 13. Home team supplies one new game ball and one good used ball fOr each game. Home team is responsible for the bases to be placed prior to the game. 14. Base paths should be set to forty feet between each base.

From today's installment of The Writer's Almanac:

The word "Easter" comes from an ancient pagan goddess worshipped by Anglo Saxons named Eostre. According to legend, Eostre once saved a bird whose wings had frozen during the winter by turning the bird into a rabbit. Because the rabbit had once been a bird, it could still lay eggs, and that rabbit became our Easter Bunny.

Elliot and his buddy Fitzhugh strike fierce poses on Easter.

From an article on abcnews.com:

The more sexual content in television and magazines that teens are exposed to, the more likely they are to have sexual intercourse at an early age, a new study says. The University of North Carolina study, published in today's issue of the journal Pediatrics, concludes that white adolescents who view more sexual content than their peers are 2.2 times more likely to have sexual intercourse by the time they are 14 to 16 years old. "Some, especially those who have fewer alternative sources of sexual norms, such as parents or friends, may use the media as a kind of sexual superpeer that encourages them to be sexually active," the study authors state. And, as similar past studies have noted, "one of the strongest protective factors against early sexual behavior was clear parental communication about sex."

The article goes to discuss various limitations of the study, chicken-or-egg arguments, etc.

Today we also watched Eddie Murphy's remake of The Nutty Professor (1996,PG-13) (Screen It! Review). From Wikipedia:

A 1996 remake starred Eddie Murphy as nice university professor Sherman Klump, suffering from severe obesity. He invents a miracle weight loss potion so he can seduce the girl of his dreams.

This was loaned to us by a friend from our small group after he and our preacher were fondly reminiscing about all the fart jokes. Yes, we have an interesting preacher. I give it 3 out of 5.