a good day

I left work today with the distinct impression that I'd made progress! It's a sunny warm day with a slight breeze. My weekend also starts today since I'm flying out to a wedding tomorrow morning.

I walked down the prettiest street in my neighborhood on my way home from the train. The home owners on that street have been busy planting flowering bushes - I even passed by three girls helping out their parents in the front yard, all three girls wearing shirts that said "Harvard", and arguing about where to put the next plant. Fresh paint jobs abound, especially the buttercream yellow house with the round turret and inviting front patio. Guys in the street tossing around a football.

I popped open a beer and smoked a cigarette on my deck as soon as I got home. And now I'm writing even though I have nothing in particular to write.

I've been preparing for my upcoming trip to Italy (by the by, I'll post pics on my flickr page when I get back). These preparations entail tour books, google searches, checking the forecast repeatedly, making lists of things to pack, checking to see whether my passport is still valid, and mentally preparing myself for what my mother will find to complain about. Last time, she hated Florence. She will _never_ go back to Florence.

But the main thing I am worried about is which of the following she will criticize the most: my hair, my weight, my clothes, my skin, my teeth, or something else? I believe she means well. She equates looking good with feeling good, and what good mother doesn't want their daughter to feel good?

She's also said, "If your mother doesn't tell you, no one will." Only a Mom is in a position to be personally, crushingly insulting.

Don't get me wrong, I love my Mom, but most of the things she says could use some "work" are things I'm already sufficiently self-conscious about. After all, I see myself in the mirror every day, and every woman I know can point to 50 things wrong with herself when looking in a mirror.

She's going to tell me I need a hair cut. I know I need a hair cut, I've been putting it off for ages. Because I hate the stylist I went to last time, and (like all other women) I fear new hair stylists. Despite that, what I've discovered is that I like having my hair long. It may not be the most "flattering" style for my face/age/shape/etc., but it feels good. And that's the whole point, isn't it?

I like that my hair doesn't look the same two days in a row. It just does it's own thing. I like that when it's down, it's kind of chaotic. Sunlight makes it look all sorts of different shades of brown and red (and it's really difficult to find the couple gray hairs in there.) It moves with a nice breeze. I can cover my face with it. Or just feel it brush my my shoulders. When I put it up in a pony tail - for one, cool, I can put it up in a pony tail! - it bounces when I walk. When I turn my head, it swings from one shoulder to the other. Lately, the pony tail has been preferring one side over the other so it kind of drapes over my left shoulder, and it might look stupid, but it feels great. I can put it up and take it down 50 times a day if I want, like I did in high school, and that reminds me of Mr. Percival, my Astronomy teacher senior year, who was one of the nicest teachers I ever had despite sending me to the Vice Principal's office for skipping class too many times (astronomy was before first period (or homeroom), who can get up that early _every_ day?). He also was the supervisor for the "Principles of Technology" class a friend of mine created, and I took later in the day, which meant he was supposed to see me twice a day - sometimes, obviously, he only saw me once, but one of the days he saw me twice he stopped to look at me, baffled, and asked me how many times I would put my hair up and then take it down in a given day. At the end of the year, he showed 2001 in Astronomy, which I slept through. He was a great teacher. Even he realized how much I like to play with my hair. The more there is to play with, the better.

I've come to the conclusion that there are approximately two people reading this blog. I might as well just write whatever bullshit I want instead of waiting until I have something smart to say.

help

I need this now:

“The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as ‘What shall I do tomorrow?’ and ‘What job shall I take?’ ”

Why not sacrifice my privacy for this kind of comprehensive, day-to-day, completely altruistic help. I'm not even sure whether that was sarcastic.

Here's the rest of the article:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/c3e49548-088e-11dc-b11e-000b5df10621.html

Little Children

I wrote this earlier in the week, began to think it was stupid, but figured I'd post it anyway.

I have been thinking about Maslow's pyramid of needs and self-actualization, and then I watched a movie, Little Children, that seems to depict a fundamental component behind his scheme. Maslow's pyramid describes how he believes people prioritize their needs, starting with the fulfillment of basic physiological processes (level 1) up through our need for safety (2), love (3), self-confidence and proficiency (4) - and even beyond that to more the cognitive scientific and artistic pursuits (5-7). The idea is that you satisfy your needs on one level, and then your priorities shift to satisfying the needs on the next level. You progress up and up, with the ultimate goal of reaching a state of complete self-fulfillment, "to become everything that one is capable of becoming". However, sometimes a previously satisfied need all of a sudden becomes a problem again. You regress to prioritize things that level again.

In Little Children, Kate Winslet's character, Sara, was a PhD candidate in English Literature. She married an older man. At that point she was probably reasonably fulfilled. Then, she had a baby. She stopped working on her thesis. She became a stay-at-home suburban Mom, and her husband grew distant. She dropped down from the advanced levels of prioritizing her intellectual pursuits, she lost her self-esteem and sense of achievement in life (4), and she no longer felt loved by her husband (3). She doesn't even feel a strong bind with her daughter. Thus, she regresses, seeking intimacy elsewhere to satisfy her level 3 needs.

A similar analysis could be applied to some of the other characters in the movie: her lover loses his self-esteem as he is emasculated by his loving wife, which he attempts to regain through this affair and his attempts at regaining his youthful masculinity; his friend loses everything, his job on the police force, his family, and ultimately his sense of security, leading him to lash out against the new-to-the-neighborhood pedophile; etc. (I imagine the pedophile never progressed beyond level 1.)

The movie essentially is about how adults, when their lives no longer fulfill them, revert to acting irresponsibly, like children, or alternatively how they fall back, unconsciously, to lower levels of Maslow's pyramid, trying to fill in the needs they suddenly miss.

Why is it that their instincts drive them to a quick patch job? And why do they only realize their mistake when a catastrophe threatens their lives?

counterpoint

I posted about what I thought might contribute to an idyllic academic research community awhile ago (in truth, I posted it yesterday, but it's back-dated to when I started the post - that gives some insight into how slow I am, or how unfocused perhaps). Happy, co-existing, equal research partners.

I ran across this post today:

http://florists.blogspot.com/2007/03/there-are-no-equals-in-research.html

which describes the primary stumbling block to my utopia. Ego.

I just read another of his posts, where he laments having an "elephantine" memory about certain, one might say insignificant, events/conversations, but a complete inability to remember to charge his cell phone. Hmmm. I can relate.

something is wrong

The latest from my online browsing: "Use Google Calendar to Schedule Relaxation".

I had an almost visceral reaction to that headline this morning. If life has reached the point where you have to block off time from 8:15 to 8:45 Tuesday morning to read poetry, then you're screwed in some fundamental way.

What if you only made it part way through The Rime of the Ancient Mariner at 8:45? Do you put it down or take 10 more minutes to finish it? Do you stress out about the minute you lost thinking about what to do? Did you process the last 5 minutes of reading or was your mind already thinking about the meeting scheduled right after your poetry session?

Then again, it's Sunday morning, and I'm sitting at work. Who has the fundamental problem to own up to?

update on flame retardant church

On this morning's walk to the train, I noticed a porta-potty on the front steps of the church.

an old snippet

I found this in an old memo system I used to use on my computer. They are notes I took after reading a pair of speeches given by Steve Pinker and Liz Spelke after the notorious statement made by the former Harvard president, Larry Summers. In re-reading I don't recall what some of the comments refer to (e.g. "Genetic Boys"), but in general I believe I simply jotted down their points of argument and some mention of the data supporting them.

Six differences that relate to under-representation of women in the sciences and engineering - according to Steve Pinker:

1) Priorities in life
- family vs. status
- work hours
2) Interest in people v. things
3) Willingness to take risks
4) 3-D mental transformations
- mental rotation
- spatial perception
- spatial visualization
5) Mathematical reasoning
6) Variance within each sex

The question is are any of these innate?

1) There are possible biological mechanisms
2) Some of these appear to be universal, or near-universal, across different cultures
- Could be a result of size difference - women always placed in certain roles because they are smaller and considered therefore the "weaker" sex
3) Stability over time
4) Similar differences can be seen in other species (polygynous)
5) Emerge in childhood
6) Genetic boys
7) Lack of differential treatment by parents & teachers
8) correlation of prenatal sex hormones with certain behaviors
9) Reports of correlation between levels of circulating sex hormones and certain aptitudes
10) Imprinted X chromosomes


Liz Spelke:
"I'm saying that when you add up all the things that men are good at, and all the things that women are good at, there is no overall advantage for men that would put them at the top of the fields of math and science."
(recasting the argument.)
She disagrees with the idea that women are born more interested in people and men are born more interested in things. In other words, they disagree on what the research is actually showing us.
Five "core" systems that are the foundation for mathematical reasoning:
1) Representation of small, exact numbers of objects (~ 5 months)
2) Discriminating approximate and large orders of magnitude (~5 months)
3) Natural number concepts (verbal counting) (~2 1/2-4 years)
4) Geometry
5) Landmarks
Sex difference emerge later in life, making the distinction between social and genetic sources murky.
Different problem solving strategies
- Boys tend to rely on geometry and girls tend to rely on landmarks
- For 3D rotations, boys tend to use holistic rotation vs. Girls who do feature by feature comparison
- Boys tend to employ ven diagram-like spatial reasoning vs. girls who tend to plug in formulas
Spelke claims that girls and boys get the same grades in math classes at the college level.
The SAT-M underpredicts the success of women in math.
Spelke also claims, and cites evidence, that parents really do perceive their children differently depending on the sex and independent of reality.
Under-representation of women occurs as a result of:
1) Biased perceptions of men and women
2) Men likely see that they have better odds than women (?)
3) Discouragement from math & science early on
4) Lack of female mentors snowball effect