Quantum states

It snowed all day Friday, making for a scary bike ride home.  This afternoon Jonathan and I took a couple of neighbor boys up to the park near the mouth of the canyon and went sledding.  There were lots of people out, and the snow was wearing itself off the local sledding hill.  Jonathan had his arm cast wrapped up in a couple of plastic bags, with his coat sleeve pulled over on top.  After the first time down the hill he said it hurt, and I almost took him back home.  But the arm felt fine quickly, and he was ok after that.  We spent at least an hour running up and down that hill afterwards.  That's good for everyone.

***

This week has been an eventful one, locally, nationally.

Lots of losing.  Failing.  My mother's big cause, the culmination of a lot of work on her part, was voted down.

Is it really better to have tried but failed?

In quantum physics, the state of a particle is generally changed by the action of measuring it.  In real life, before having tried, there are two possible states: success and failure.  Before you invest the time to try, you have to believe that success is a more likely outcome.  But after you've tried, and the measurement has been taken, and you have failed, there is only failure.  There is no more potential for success, unless you re-run the experiment, adjusting something.  Unless you start over, you're just a failure.

That hurts.

Let the world run without trying.  Leave the quantum states unmeasured.

Broken arm

Jonathan broke his arm on Wednesday.  He was out gathering candy from the neighborhood, in the dark, and he tripped over a scooter left on a lawn between houses.

Wednesday night he came home in tears, and Thursday morning I spent the time with him at the doctor's office, waiting, and then at the radiologist's, waiting, and then waiting, until I abandoned the waiting to Tim, who took Jonathan in to get the cast.

The boy is fine now, and was happy to show off the cast to his friends in school on Friday.  In four weeks we'll go in for more waiting and get the cast taken off.

Meanwhile, watch out for sharp toys on dark lawns.

Assorted evidence of insanity

I woke up at 5am on Tuesday, and as I rolled over to drift back to sleep, a little voice reminded me that my grant proposal needs to be submitted a week before its official deadline.  And then I started counting backwards from the official deadline, and jumped out of bed.  It's due at the end of this week.  Not next week.  Stupid, stupid voice in my head.  So I spent the next two hours writing.  And guess what I'm doing tomorrow morning?  

Speaking of writing, I have far too many writing projects looming over me, and I don't seem to be able to finish any of them.  All those projects are really stressing out that same little voice in my head -- the one in charge of keeping things organized and running on time.  It can't keep track of what needs to be done and when, and it is lashing out against me in its frustration.  I'm not quite sure what to do with it.  To make things worse, the writing projects themselves keep bothering me, too.  They all clamor for my attention, and when they don't get it, they pile on the guilt -- at least the work projects do.  The fiction projects don't just pile on guilt.  They scream at me to do something about them.  And unlike the work projects, which stay down when I tell them to except for a whimper of guilt, the fiction ones climb after me, and attack when my guard is down, such as when I'm drifting off to sleep, or walking over to work.  If I were this single minded about work projects, I'd be winning my Nobel prize.

Jonathan needed a Wednesday after school program.  So I volunteered.  I offered to run a math program for kids, grades 3 through 6.  I have taught it three times so far.  There are too many kids.  There are so many kids that even the simplest example takes forever to explain.  And every kid has an idea for an answer to every question.  Or if they don't have an idea, at least they have something else that they really really need to share.  And if I don't have a question for them to answer?  Then they have one for me!  They talk on top of each other and on top of me.  And they generate random, unexpected answers that I have to think about, and that I have to ask everyone else to think about, but it's hard to think when you really really need me to call on you.  Oh!  Oh!  Please!  Please let me spew something random!  Me, I come home totally wiped out.  But I don't think there is anything I can do about it.  How could I justify squelching such enthusiasm, especially for math, of all things?  

Today I forgot my keys.  I biked to school in the rain, and then went to lock up my bike and found my keys were not in my pocket.  So I looked at my watch.  I had to teach class in eight minutes.  Home was a 15 minute bike ride in the wrong direction.  So I wheeled my bike up to my department office, begged to borrow the master key, let myself into my office and parked my bike behind my desk, and ran off to do my teaching.  Later in the day, someone saw me wheeling my bike out of my office, and said I was very smart to have brought it in out of the rain.  Except that I felt like a complete idiot for having forgotten to bring my keys.  

I think I'd better stop.  I am coming up with too many items that point to my insanity, and I can't afford the time to see a therapist.  Must write....  Aaah!  

Gender bias

Soon after my birthday, I read a couple of articles that I found extremely depressing:

From Scientific American:  Study shows gender bias in science is real.  And from Inside Higher Ed:  Study shows scientists are biased against women.

I read the Inside Higher Ed article first.  The article depressing in and of itself:  Scientists were given identical resumes for hypothetical students, with just the names changed.  One name obviously female, one obviously male, and asked to rate the students.

... [T]he scientists were asked to rate the students' competence on a 5-point scale. Male faculty rated the male student 4.01 and the female student 3.33. Female scientists rated the male student 4.10 and the female student 3.32. On salary, the gaps were also notable. The average salary suggested by male scientists for the male student was $30,520; for the female student, it was $27,111. Female scientists recommended, on average, a salary of $29,333 for the male student and $25,000 for the female student.

That's bad. The scientists didn't think they were being sexist. They just honestly thought that Jane wasn't as competent as the identical John.  Which makes me wonder (a) do I do this?  I hope I do not.  I must be vigilant and try to make sure I do not.  And (b) am I a victim of this?  Would I ever know if so?  Is my work valued less because I have a very distinctly feminine name?  (I have wondered in the past, but what can you possibly do?)

The most depressing thing about the article, however, was the comments.  The blog from Scientific America summed it up best:

[M]ost people who read this will have one of four reactions:

1) This is not surprising, but I’m glad we have something concrete to show what we’ve known all along.

2) This is surprising and disturbing.

3) Figure 2 is misleading because the y-axis does not start at zero. Therefore, I will reject everything else exposed by this study.

4) Equally qualified women should be discriminated against, because they could go off and get pregnant. 

On the Inside Higher Ed blog, which is supposedly of interest to my academic colleagues, there seemed to be a huge number of comments #4.  And also comments along the line of "The women are rating the female students just as badly as the men, so it can't really be sexism."  And "Yeah but maybe the women looked the same on paper, but they wouldn't be as good later in life because women never are the best of the best.  Those are the men."

These are comments from educated people, the educators of America.  Sometimes America sucks.

You know what, American educators?  (1) It's none of your business if they go off and get pregnant.  And the fact that they might doesn't make them less effective workers and poorer scientists.  (2) Women can also be sexist to women.  In fact, historically women have been our own worst enemies (see for example women's suffrage).  (3) Studies show over and over that it isn't the gender that's holding the women back from performing at the top.  It's the culture.  A relatively recent study published in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society, for example, showed that we Americans are hurting both our men and our women in science by our cultural attitudes.  Sure math is great later in life, but you're a loser if you're good at it as a kid.  The peak performers in the highest tier math competitions in high school and college are both male and female, but they're coming from other countries where kids and adults value math as much as basketball.

As I have mused about this in the past, the advice I receive is along the lines of, "just put your head down and do the best work you can and don't worry about it."  Which is excellent advice, and how I've lived my life.  But sometimes things need to be worried about.  But I'm not big enough to do all the worrying on my own.

Reader, please go worry for me.  Thanks.  That's much better.

Birthday

Today it is my birthday, the first day of fall, and the birthday of Frodo and Bilbo Baggins.  I am reclining on my couch with a stack of papers, which I graded earlier today in orange ink.  I used the orange pen because it is my favorite, and it is my birthday.  On one's birthday, one should grade only with one's favorite pen.  Also, orange is a good color for the first day of fall.

For my birthday, I purchased myself a pair of black platform heels.  I have never owned a pair of high heeled shoes in my life, because I am already almost six feet tall, and it's already hard to hear the conversations way down there when you're so tall.  Why add three inches?  But recently I decided that I'm old and deaf enough now that I'm not going to hear the conversations anyway.  So I would buy a pair of heels.  And then I decided that if I were going to increase my height some, why not increase it as much as possible?  Hence the platform heels.  They add 5 inches to my stature.  When I put them on, I am nearly a whole head taller than Tim.  I can't wait to wear them to church.  They will go really well with my short black skirt and my orange striped tights.

In other news, I am still on the mailing list for Bosinver Farm Cottages, in Cornwall, England.  I received their fall mailer yesterday.  "Have you ever thought about coming to Cornwall to celebrate Christmas or New Year?"  Hmm....  Thinking about it now.  Stormy seas below wind swept cliffs.  Green moors and gray skies.  Warm fire in my farm cottage and a stack of novels to read.  Christmas here is nice, with family and maybe snow and a library card.  But Christmas in Cornwall sounds perfect.

I would even leave my orange pen behind.

But maybe I'd bring the platform heels in case I want to go anywhere posh.

Parenting

Today, I am feeling super skilled at this parenting thing.  This was a star-on-the-forehead kind of parenting kind of day, so I have decided to write it all here and publish it to the world so that you, World, can go home and put a little checkmark by the box that says:  Artax is a good parent.  For today.

First, I walked Jonathan and his friend over to school.  Star for walking over in the morning.

Second, I was two minutes early to pick him up.  Star for timeliness.  And I brought a popsicle for him to eat on the way home.

On the way home, I gave him math puzzles to solve in his head while we walked.  And he thought about them and asked for more.

When we got home, I asked Jonathan if while he was outside, he would please pick some grapes for dinner, and I handed him bowl and scissors.  He went out and made a huge amount of noise with the whistle he picked up at scouts (come on scout masters, a whistle?), but eventually he did return with the bowl completely full of grapes.

After dinner, I told him if he would please do the dishes for me, we could watch TWO episodes of Avatar: the Last Airbender on Netflix.  He did the dishes.

So I sent him off to get the TV ready to go.  He called me when it was ready.  And then when TV was over, he ran and got his jammies on and brushed his teeth and read for a while, until my bedtime alarm went off, and then he packed himself off to bed with a good night kiss.

What a charming child.  I must be a really good parent, right?  Go mark that little box that says "Artax is a good parent."  Go do it now, today, before we all go to sleep and wake up with a completely new day tomorrow and I lose my temper and forget to do the laundry and have a nervous breakdown and my child turns back into a regular child again instead of a mythical purple unicorn.

I sure love my purple unicorn.  I even love him when he is a multi-headed hydra, or when I am a multi-headed hydra.  Sometimes it's hard to know the difference.

Have you marked that box yet?

New Office

I moved into a new office yesterday, just next door to my old office.  With the help of a couple of student employees from the department office, I got all my stuff ported and adjusted within about ... three hours.

One reason it took so long is that I took my furniture with me.  And we had to figure out how to get my L-shaped desk appropriately situated.  The window is in the opposite corner in this new office, so the computer couldn't go there.  And if it went in the other corner it would block the whiteboard.  And in either of the other two corners it would block the door.  So I put a leg of the L jutting out into the room, and the other leg near the window, but with enough space that I can still stand by the window when I need some natural light.

It is unfortunate that it took so long to move.  And the other negative thing about the new office is that two of the four walls are wood paneled, which means the room looks dark and cave-like.  But otherwise, it is great.  The window looks east, across the library, to the wall of mountains that holds the university on one side.  I can already watch autumn creeping down into the valley.

And space-wise?  The new office is 25% bigger than the old one.  With that extra space, and my L-shaped desk jutting into the middle of the room, there is a place against a far wall to put a couch.  That, my friends, is all I have ever wanted in a job since I was in grad school:  an office large enough to fit a couch.

Of course, it will have to be a small couch -- less than 70 inches long.  And it shouldn't have any arms, because those waste space.  So I've been looking at options.

Here is one from Ikea:

Nice, eh?  But pricey.  And I would have to buy a new cover, because white isn't really going to work long term with dust from the whiteboard flying around in a small space.

I like this option for a cover:

Casual, yet durable, in light gray.  But it would cost an extra $320, on top of the pricey sofa.  I don't think that's in my budget.  Because I don't actually have a couch budget.

So then I started looking around even more, and found true love:

Perfect!  Arm-free, not too white, but not too dark.  It would add lovely color to a gloomy space.  It's a little short:  just 40 inches, which means only a couple of people could sit on it comfortably at a time.  But the price is awesome:  on sale for just $215 (plus shipping).  And I can buy a matching chair for $139.  Although I don't know where I would put that matching chair.

Actually, maybe I'll move them both into our spare room downstairs.