Ada Lovelace Day: On Role Models for Women in Science

Today, October 14, is Ada Lovelace Day. You have probably never heard of her (I hadn't before last year's Ada Lovelace Day), but she is often referred to as the first computer programmer. She was born Ada Gordon but had the good fortune of being married to an aristocrat named King who became the Earl of Lovelace, and so she became Lady Ada King, Countess of Lovelace. She lived in the mid-1800s, a time when people could have names out of fairytales, but even women of means were rarely educated.

Ada Lovelace Day was started a few years ago to celebrate the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (singular), commonly taken together as STEM fields. Women are underrepresented in these fields, and though there has been progress, it is frustratingly slow. And in this progress, white women are outpacing women of color. It is often thought that we need only wait until the old, white sexists in these fields are replaced by a younger more progressive population, but that expresses a complete misunderstanding of the causes of the disparity. Plus, I can tell you from experience that the younger scientific community still has a long way to go before becoming "progressive" on these issues, women included.

What are some of the causes, if not old white sexists? The Finding Ada site sums it up:

The reasons for this inequality are many, spanning issues such as social pressure on girls and women to pursue “suitable” careers, subtle misogyny in higher education and the workplace, and a lack of support for women who wish to have a family or re-skill when re-entering the workforce after having a family.

I agree generally, and though of course old white sexists do have their role in preventing the advancement of women (and not just in STEM fields), I tend to think of it as primarily the result of stereotypes. In cultures/countries where the stereotype that men are better at science and math doesn't exist - such as Italy, apparently - the representation of women is more balanced, or even skewed toward women. However, even in fields like nursing where the stereotype works toward the underrepresentation of men, the representation of men increases as you go up the career ladder (I saw this in a talk so can't reference the data); there is still the stereotype that men are better leaders and managers, which benefits the advancement of men over women even in female-dominated careers.

So, stereotypes are evil and allow people to make mental shortcuts, which affect their judgment even in the face of contradictory objective data (read "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman). What do we do about it? Ada Lovelace Day is about doing something positive by raising the profiles of women in science and stressing the importance of role models. People are encouraged to blog about women in STEM that they admire and participate in various events, online and in person.

But when I think about what inspired me to become a scientist/astronomer/astrophysicist/cosmologist (all of which apply to me, listed in decreasing order of the representation of women), I don't think role models ever played an important role (cheeky wink!) in my career choices at all. Perhaps the lack of female role models never bothered me personally because I was a tomboy and played sports, and if anyone ever said boys were better at something, I would probably reply "nuh uh!" Perhaps it is because I was blessed with the naive sense that I can do anything because I'm good at everything, which stuck with me until grad school. Even so, I remember trying to learn about astronomy in the career center and thinking, "That seems cool, but I don't want to be an astrophysicist, that sounds much too hard." Who knows what having a role model in science could have done. I do remember having a couple of great female science teachers.

After facing the realism in grad school that I'm not better than everyone (and that that's okay, that doesn't make me the worst), I didn't exactly have many female astronomers or physicists to look up to. The lone female tenured astronomy professor in my department was a hard ass that never seemed to support women (or anyone); but I was educating myself about "diversity" issues in science and learned that it's common for older women who achieved success in a much harsher climate to avoid anything to do with "women in science" as a survival mechanism. Plus, the women I saw (and continue to see) invited to give talks at conferences are all too awesome; but this can also be explained by sociological research.

First, girls at various stages in education out-perform boys, even in stereotypically male subjects such as science and math. In college, the representation of women in these fields starts to fall, and this continues to fall at each successive stage (graduate school, postdoc, professor), a phenomenon known as the leaky pipeline. So, first assume that male and female ability is equal (even if there is evidence that girls outperform boys): when women self-select out of the field, either because of social pressure (perhaps seeing chemistry as a more friendly environment than physics) or whatever reason, the women who stay are more likely to be at the top of the ability curve. There is a biased selection effect, something which astronomers should be familiar with. When there are barriers to advancement, the super awesome women make it, while the average men make it, resulting in a pool of female role models that doesn't reflect the average a few stages back in the pipeline. (This is also a reason why striving for a percentage of female invited speakers, for example, that matches the representation in the field (which is less than 50%), is misguided: there is evidence that women are MOAR AWESOME, so invite MOAR WOMEN!)

Secondly, throwing female role models at the problem might not be all it's cracked up to be. I can't find the reference so it may not be true, but I remember hearing that role models can have a negative impact: when the role models are too few or too awesome, it can be hard for younger people to identify with the supposed role model. Perhaps I remember this because I often don't feel awesome and don't see myself in the small pool of women cosmologists who are awesome and give ALL the invited talks. (As I said above, we could do with inviting MOAR WOMEN, not just the big wigs everyone knows about!) But there could be other issues with the role model solution: this study finds that both women and men are equally beneficial as role models for recruitment (contrasted with the benefits of women for retention), and another study "suggests that role models whose success seems unobtainable can make young students feel threatened rather than motivated" (which may support my "role models too awesome" theory). Just being female and being successful in STEM may not be enough to inspire aspiring young girls. 

None of this should be taken to mean that I don't support Ada Lovelace Day. It is a great chance to celebrate the achievements of women in STEM fields, and I've learned some interesting things already. But I remain unconvinced that role models are the solution many think they are, both from my personal experience and from a few snippets of sociological research I just dug up and half-remember. And when it is seen as a magical cure-all, it over-taxes the few women who have made it to senior positions in STEM, who, as one male said in a women in science meeting, need to "step up" and take on more responsibility, with no hint of irony at all.

Logic

Today I made a few observations of my mental state. It amused me to put them in an ordered list:

1. Being depressed makes it hard to get work done.
2. When I get work done, I feel good.
3. Feeling good is the opposite of being depressed.
4. Therefore, in order to feel good, I must first feel good.

I was going to post something like the above on facebook with some pithy comment about my brief training in formal logic. "Haha, logic shows the impossibility of ever breaking the cycle of depression!" I would say, then sit back and marvel in my own cleverness.

Then I actually thought about the formal logic of it... it turns out I made a pretty basic error. To show you how, we have to translate the above statements into symbols, which lay bare their meanings by removing the shiny words. We will use the following definitions:

• A = being depressed
• B = getting work done
• C = feeling good

Each statement is conditional - it can either be true or false. If it is false, then its opposite is true, indicated by "Not". So if A is false, then Not A is true.

My list of observations links together these individual statements by "if - then" connections. Though I never actually say, "If I'm depressed then I don't get work done," that is the meaning of observation number 1. Let's now translate them all:

1. If A then Not B
2. If B then C
3. C = Not A
4. If C then C

Let me first make it clear that there's no logical error in the above. The conclusion is obviously a pretty meaningless tautology. The error was in my thinking that 4 follows from 1, 2, and 3, by an implicit, "If I feel good, then I get work done," which translates to:

• If C then B

With 2 above that leaves us with "If C then B" and "If B then C", thus:

• If C then C,

or, "If I feel good then I get work done then I feel good." What a hilariously depressing joke!

Unfortunately, "If C then B" DOES NOT FOLLOW. It is a common mistake to assume that "If A then B" implies "If Not A then Not B", which wikipedia helpfully informs us is called denying the antecedent. What does follow, however, is:

• If B then Not A,

from the transposition of number 1. Then we can see, by number 3, that this is exactly the same as number 2, "If B then C". And since we can't have a discussion of logic without any Latin, I will point out that this is the same as the rule of modus tollens: If A then B; Not B; Therefore Not A. So my observations amount to two equivalent statements, a definition, and a tautology.

I hope we all have learned something today. I think at least a cursory introduction to formal logic should be required, perhaps in secondary education; no reason to wait for college. In practice it mixes algebra with reading comprehension, and the result is better reasoning and critical thinking skills. Plus, it can help you avoid making a fool of yourself on facebook, and by God we need more of That!

The Psychology of Gaming

[Note: this blog post contains gamer terminology. If some terminology is unknown to you, hopefully I have linked it to an explanatory website, since I don't want to have to make everything explicit to noobs. (See, that's a link to the Oxford Dictionary. Legit!)]

I don't like to think of myself as a "gamer," a word which invariably is associated with teenage boys secluded in basements and poor life choices. But, I play a lot of games and always have, so I guess the term fits. Whether an involved story-driven RPG or adventure game, a Strategy game, an FPS on my brother's console, or Minesweeper and Solitaire, they all have their place. They've all suited some purpose at some point in my life, both healing and destructive.

I've even gone to the dark side and paid monthly to play an MMO! Paid real money! This is the genre that World of Warcraft made popular - think Leeroy Jenkins and anecdotes about people playing so much they forget to eat. While I am proud to say I've never played WoW - the game I played was based on LOTR, and I enjoyed coming up with cool and grammatically correct Elvish names for my weapons (NERD!) - it's still not the sort of thing you brag about to your scientist colleagues and non-gamer friends. I don't necessarily regret the countless hours I spent wandering around Middle-Earth, but even at the time I knew I was using it as a coping strategy for depression.

Lorien is a good place to be sad.

Why do people play games? More specifically, why do some people get totally swept up in gaming, and not others? What needs or desires do games fulfill in the human psyche?

I didn't exactly ask myself these questions right away. While some part of me knew that I was playing too much, that not going into work (in so far as grad school counts as "work") was a real sign that things were not okay in my life, those types of thoughts were exactly what I was avoiding by gaming instead. Then at some point I came across The Guild and everything made sense: the first episode starts with the main character breaking up with her therapist in the middle of a raid.

I think the comedic value of breaking up with your therapist is obvious regardless of whether you've been to therapy, but I don't actually remember if I had a therapist at that point. I do remember, later, attempting to explain to my therapist the insights I had on the Psychology of Gaming that surely came from The Guild: there are clear goals and rewards, a continuous sense of advancement, an adjustable difficulty setting, all while acting like the perfect version of yourself and wearing immaculate armor. When your real life (RL) demons become too much, you can always conquer dragons in the gaming world and collect your well earned loot.

Loot. It's also a verb.

The Guild is worth watching, obvi, but I watched it again for you and picked off these quotes:

"at the end of the night you can always just log off"

"cartoon characters who let me feel a sense of achievement in an imaginary world"

"I've never really felt like I had any control over my life. I think that's why I like video games. It is so much easier to measure life in experience points."

"BAM! Rent Check! Die! Meter Maid!"

"If I get rejected, what's the down side? I'll cry a lot. I'll probably do that anyway."

"I can't wait until I'm the one picking someone instead of someone picking me. This way there's no way that I can be rejected!"

"I've never gotten into Real Time Strategy games.... How is that fun? I have a hard enough time coping with real life in real time!"

Suffice it to say I completely empathized with the main character. There is a fine line, I found, between a helpful coping strategy and a destructive one, but it didn't take cutting down on gaming to feel better. Quite the reverse. Once I was able to actively address my depression, I was able to appreciate the positive aspects of gaming instead of feeling guilty about it, before, during, and after. The playing itself wasn't nearly so destructive as the guilt.

Plus, it's so pretty!

The Guild is ultimately about people who play an immersive, social role playing game, which is why so many people get completely drawn into MMOs; but there are other psychological needs that different types of games meet. Many types, but especially RPG and adventure games, provide a sense of escapism to an alternate reality, in which you act out specific roles. Adventure games in particular (for example, Myst) involve puzzle-solving, but instead of a static crossword or sudoku you are solving puzzles in an immersive world to advance a story. First-person shooter (FPS) games (for example, Halo) are sometimes also set in other (alien) worlds and thus provide escapism, but often they attempt to be realistic war games. I'm not generally drawn to these, but I find a gross satisfaction in pulling off a head shot - a test of hand/eye coordination and BOOM! another enemy is down. FPS games make me afraid for humanity, and of myself.

Strategy games are a different type of puzzle solving, but long-term; they are often about managing resources and as such involve taking a character out into the world to explore. The game I played most in middle-school to high-school, and even college, was a fantasy strategy game called Heroes of Might and Magic. Explore the map to gather resources, build an army, find and defeat your foes. It was a turn-based strategy, so I had plenty of time to decide my next move. (I tend to take a long time deciding....) Real-time strategy games can offer more of an adrenalin rush, but I personally think they depend too much on clicking speed. Starcraft is a popular example of these.

"Gil-galad was an Elven-king...."

Then there are the social aspects of games. You can play with people or against people, whether strangers or friends, for most of the game types I mentioned. Humans are social creatures, so the benefits of gaming with other humans are self-evident. I tend to prefer solo games, but occasionally in my MMO life I would group up with 6, 12, or 24 people to defeat monsters for epic rewards. After a few times I could tell why people get addicted. It was an incredibly focused and intense experience. If only I could find such focus in my research!

And then there was HabitRPG. One day I told facebook, "I wish real life were more like games," and magically a friend told me about Habit. It was exactly what I needed. Send a work email, gain experience and gold. Use that gold for whatever rewards you like: health potions (so you won't die), a fancy new sword, or real-life cake. Perform bad habits, which you set for yourself, and you lose health. Good habits, and checking off To Do items, gain you experience and gold. Level up to increase your stats! All of a sudden, the "Submit that proposal and DING! Level up!" scenario was a real (fake) possibility!

Habit is now my To Do list, and my Dailies list (in MMOs, these are quests you can do every day), and occasionally I grow a baby dragon into a big dragon for my character to ride. I have long since bought the top level weapons and armor, but I don't want to pay real money to start anew at level 1. Maybe this means everything will be easy once I reach RL level 50, but meanwhile in my Habit game/life, I make things as difficult as needed, because if a game/life is too easy, what's the point?

Perhaps that's good advice from gaming that I can bring to my real life character. (By that I mean myself....) If things seem difficult, that is a sign that they are worth going for; epic loot could be gained, after all. And if they really are too difficult, I can always take a break to play a game and kill a dragon.

There is more on the subject of the Psychology of Gaming to talk about, like for example why the hell Candy Crush and FarmVille are so popular, why unlocking levels and achievements is so satisfying, etc. These can probably be explained by various psychological studies into the benefits of seemingly mindless tasks, or focused attention, but I will leave it to you... there are plenty of TED talks for the interested. As to why some people get drawn into games and some don't, that could be a mixture of personality and susceptibility to addiction. It really is interesting how much of a stark contrast there is between people who play games and people who don't get the appeal at all!

I was also going to talk about the experience of losing my ability to play games, but that is too traumatic... I may have a permanent fear that my mouse will start to move by itself, but I have a virus-free computer now and everything is right with the world. EVERYTHING IS OKAY. I AM SAFE.

Excuse me while I go kill some dragons....

Noro lim!

Coming Out Depressed

This past May was apparently Mental Health Awareness Month in the USA. I only knew about it because a cartoon appeared on my twitter feed:

The issue is complex, but the point is simple. We don't treat mental health issues the same as physical health issues, and this is to the detriment of our mental health.

Someone I follow (celebrity, not personal friend) shared this, adding something like "I have anxiety and depression and I'm not ashamed." This is a great little cartoon, and a great message to share, but even thinking about re-tweeting it initiated a mini freak-out because I am the person in panel four and I am definitely ashamed... I couldn't re-tweet that part of the message because I wasn't out. I have anxiety and depression, and I'm mostly in the closet about it.

There are a lot of reasons people might not want to talk openly about their mental health. Being in the mental health closet is obviously very different than being in the closet for other reasons - queer, atheist, brony - but I think the unifying factor is a lack of general public understanding and acceptance.

Most of us can imagine what someone else feels when they have a physical illness. So when someone asks, "I haven't seen you in a couple days, are you okay?" you can reply, "I had the flu," and trust that they understand what you mean. They'll say, "Ugh, that sucks," and you both get on with your day. But there is no such universal understanding of mental illness. There is no trust that I can say, "I was depressed," *shrug*, and expect most people to understand. Often just thinking about feeling sad will make me feel sad, so it's not like I want to invite a discussion of sadness. Plus, I don't want to have to deal with other people's reactions to my depression on top of my depression.

What are the things I'm afraid of hearing? Things like:

• Oh no, what's wrong?
• How can I help?
• But you're great and awesome!
• I love you :)

Yes, I know, these may seem like perfectly good responses. But no, I do not want to feel different and special because sometimes my brain decides to make me feel like shit. That is not a cool thing to feel special about.

Here's how I would want to reply to the above reactions:

• Nothing specific is wrong, it doesn't work like that, and yet I can't stop asking myself that all the time hoping if only I could figure out what's wrong I would stop feeling like shit, but thank you for reminding me I feel like this for no good reason. 
• No, there is nothing you can do about it, but thanks for making this about you. 
• I'm glad you think I'm great and awesome. It must be fun having those feelings.
• Sorry, but I won't magically feel better because you love me. Stop smiling at me like that!

The problem is, people mean well. So instead of replying in a satisfying way, I would be stuck managing someone else's feelings at a time when I can't even manage my own. So most of the time, I stay in the closet.

Perhaps you're wondering what the right thing to say is? I can't help you there. I could think of some things that wouldn't bother me personally, but it really depends on the person and the situation and your relationship, and probably also the weather. "Ugh, that sucks" is a good place to start. Increasing your understanding of mental health, especially depression, is a good next step; I'm tempted to try to correct some common misconceptions here, but there are plenty of articles, blogs, and TED talks for the interested.

I guess posting this will mean coming out depressed. I can imagine all kinds of awkward interactions it could result in, especially because I never know who reads this. But I also can imagine that there are many more people who understand than I suspect, because we all rarely talk about it.


P.S. If you are a closeted brony and need someone to talk to, I have seen the documentary and think I am beginning to understand. I won't judge you. Friendship is Magic.

Belief

"Do you believe in evolution?"

No.

But let me rephrase the question:

"Do you believe that the theory of evolution is currently the best way to explain the data?"

Why, yes I do. Thanks for asking!

You can believe in a whole lot of things. You can believe in yourself, in the inherent goodness of humanity, in God, in your friends, in ghosts. If you live in Baltimore, you can just Believe. But it makes no sense to believe IN a scientific theory, or to assume that others do so. Sometimes people may say they believe in evolution and mean they believe the theory fits the data, but sometimes people are sloppy with their language and should know better. It makes no more sense to believe in evolution than it does to believe in electromagnetism.

It may seem like I'm making a minor point here - okay yes, I am, it's what I do - but what I'm getting at is that failing to make this distinction is the cause of a lot of the perceived conflict between science and religion. Believing in something is like having faith, and no one can take that away from you. But evolutionary biologists don't have faith that the theory of evolution is correct - they have data. The key thing about this kind of "science belief" is that new data can prove the theory wrong, thus changing beliefs about how well the theory works. The "faith beliefs" can change too, i.e. I can believe in the goodness of humanity but change my mind when faced with traumatic events; however, "the goodness of humanity" is not a testable theory. It would be odd to believe in a chair, but it is reasonable to believe that a chair exists (perhaps because you are sitting on it). This is what I mean by science belief: it connects a theory to data in an objective way.

A better way to phrase the distinction might be justified vs. unjustified belief. Scientific beliefs are (mostly) justified by data, i.e. they are empirical. Justification can also be rational, i.e. without recourse to data but appealing to logic. Unjustified beliefs can be based on intuition, or on preference (believing something because you want it to be true); or, like religious belief, they could be based on profound personal experiences. They are both legitimate types of belief and we all have them.

Now, you might think that justified beliefs are more strongly held and unjustified beliefs are easier to change. To the contrary, justified beliefs are far more adaptable - the data may change, your reasoning may be shown to be false - and I think most of the time we make no distinction between these types of belief in our own heads. There are just things we know, and we do not constantly ask ourselves how we know them. But the distinction matters. Unjustified beliefs are much harder to change.

To me, believing in something is like having faith in something without empirical or rational justification. And this is exactly why I hate the question, "Do you believe in evolution?"  It is like asking, "Do you believe in gravity?" I'm not floating into space, so, yes? But Newtonian gravity is wrong on cosmological scales, so no? Or did you mean relativistic gravity? What are you talking about?! It is a meaningless question.

Part of the deal of abandoning certainty is a commitment to questioning your beliefs. This gets tedious. Humans are not designed to do this. But, it is irrational to believe, contrary to the data, that humans are rational beings. Being uncertain is uncomfortable, thus abandoning certainty means valuing the truth above personal comfort. Many people place utmost value in concepts like goodness or justice, or in increasing well-being for themselves and others. But valuing truth means asking, "What is good? What is well-being?" and being okay with not knowing the answer. Valuing truth means avoiding untruths most of all. And now that I've slipped from epistemology to morality and totally derailed myself, here's an apt quote from Dune:

My father once told me that respect for the truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. "Something cannot emerge from nothing," he said. This is profound thinking if you understand how unstable "the truth" can be.

- Frank Herbert, Dune

I've recently discovered (in the past months or year) that I seem to place a high value in the truth, and I find myself thinking, when I disagree with something on the internet (like ALL THE TIME), "Well, they just don't value truth as much as I do." (Wow, that sounds pretty arrogant after writing it out loud... no one thinks to themselves, "I don't care what is true! La la la la!" Probably. But that's not what I mean...) Perhaps not valuing truth as much means they are less wary of the instability of "truth" or more trusting of sources of information. But whenever someone posts something and comments, "This is unbelievable!!!!!!" I always want to respond, "Then maybe you shouldn't believe it? And also maybe calm down with the exclamation marks a bit?"

Another way people may not "value truth as much" is when there's a disagreement; they may get defensive or take it personally because not having any perceived conflict is more important than hashing out the issues; or, having their opinions heard is more important than finding out whether these opinions conform to reality. I'm not making judgments here; these values are all valid. Part of the difference in what people value may be temperament. Personally, not only am I a professional scientist, but in my free time I read about psychology, epistemology, neuroscience, and other things that address why we believe what we believe and how we know what we know. So, I value truth highly, and others may not, and that's okay.

Getting back to the justified vs. unjustified types of belief... I think it's fair to say that justified belief is more trustworthy. Justification should be found for unjustified beliefs whenever possible, and basic assumptions, facts, and motivations that underlie belief checked often. But, though I value truth, I recognize that some belief can never be justified; further, these unjustified beliefs address some of the most profound and beautiful aspects of human existence.

This distinction is often discussed in terms of the conflict between science and religion. For example, no empirical data can address the question of God's existence, and though there may be reasoned arguments, surely very few people believe in God because they were convinced by the Kalam Cosmological Argument; it is rather something they know, because they have faith. Acting as if data or logic has anything to do with spirituality is a good way for atheists to completely miss the point and convince no one (as if convincing were a worthwhile endeavor, which it is not).

On the other hand, ignoring the overwhelming justification of a scientific theory because it conflicts with unjustified religious belief is a good way to bring the progress of society to a screeching halt. The error lies in failing to recognize those aspects which are justifiable - those which come into contact with data - and failing to separate them from questions of value, rightness, love, spirituality, etc.

Stephen Jay Gould has famously referred to science and religion as "non-overlapping magisteria," such that science deals with questions of fact and religion with morality and meaning. I may have agreed at one time, but now it is obvious to me that of course they overlap! Most religions have in their dogma explicit questions of fact; science, being a human endeavor, is not immune from questions of morality and meaning, and of course religion does not have a monopoly on morality and meaning in the first place. It seems "science" and "religion" are not the correct terms, and I don't know what the correct terms are, which may be why this blog post has been in draft form for years. I guess I will have to live with the uncertainty.

It is one of the triumphs of the human that he can know a thing and still not believe it.

- John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Puzzle

Okay, I admit it. I had back problems after softball, so I'm officially old. So I can admit to you that I bought a jigsaw puzzle. I had no choice, because my others are in storage. I have so far completed it twice. I love it.

Okay again, the whole "I'm old and have a jigsaw puzzle" schtick is a bit disingenuous.... I have always loved jigsaw puzzles, and many young people probably would feel unashamed to admit that. Maybe it's a cool hipster thing to like jigsaw puzzles now?

But it feels like a paradigm shift to me... like there's a time in your life, when you're not a kid and you're not "old," in which you're not supposed to be doing a jigsaw puzzle by yourself on the weekend. I'm definitely not a kid, so I must have transitioned to the third phase of my life, in which it's okay again for me to enjoy a jigsaw puzzle. I might as well get a cat. I hate cats.

I remember doing jigsaw puzzles with family at both sets of grandparents' houses. And I remember the story about how I was told I was too young, but I picked up a piece and put it in the right place anyway. I placed the piece just so. Maybe I enjoy it because I think I'm good at it. Maybe I'm human.

Obviously you start with the edges. In physics we'd call it boundary conditions, but the meaning is the same. You have a problem to solve, so first you need to define where the problem begins and where it ends. With puzzles, that becomes your first sorting problem: find the edge pieces; frame your question.

After that, it all depends, on the picture, and on taste. Sort a second time to pick out similar pieces. Be as efficient as you like. Flip all or some of the pieces over, and make any number of piles. This begins the creative part of puzzling. Use some combination of image and shape to put this piece, there.

One of my favorite things is picking a random piece, looking at the box, and deciding exactly where that piece goes. It may be all alone, but it has a place; it is in its place.

You can't impose your preconceptions on the pieces. Whatever way you hold it is choosing one out of the four possible orientations. What you are convinced belongs to this tree turns out to go in that bush. The sky is a good place to lose preconceptions. Faced with seamless shades of blue-white, you pay attention to details of brush stroke, subtle color gradients, size and curve of corners.... the sky is tedious until you can elevate your awareness of subtle differences. In this it is like a meditation.

Of course there is also the tactile sensation of clicking a piece onto its buddies. Doing a puzzle on anything other than a hard surface is barely even worth it. Grabbing the edges of a finished puzzle, picking it up, and bending it like a stiff piece of paper before destroying it is fun too.

Finishing a puzzle is both the best and worst part.

Flatland

What is the point of this blog post? Besides the obvious pun, which will become clear to you in a moment, I'm not really sure what the point of posting this quotation is, except that I found it interesting and compelling. I guess I will just write and we'll find the point together.

Near the end of Flatland, by E. A. Abbott, the Sphere is showing the Square (who has already witnessed visions of Lineland and Spaceland) the being, and entirety, of Pointland:

"Behold yon miserable creature. The Point is a Being like ourselves, but confined to the non-dimensional Gulf. He is himself his own World, his own Universe; of any other than himself he can form no conception; he knows not Length, nor Breadth, nor Height, for he has had no experience of them; he has no cognizance even of the number Two; nor has he a thought of Plurality; for he is himself his One and All, being really Nothing. Yet mark his perfect self-contentment, and hence learn this lesson, that to be self-contented is to be vile and ignorant, and that to aspire is better than to be blindly and impotently happy. Now listen."

(Italics mine.) The first set of italics I found profound in a Zen kind of way. In Pointland, one, everything, and nothing are all the same. Let's just sit with that for a moment.

...

...

...

Got it? Everything is nothing, and nothing is everything.

Now to the mathematics... does a point even exist? How can an infinitesimally small thing, which has no extent in either of our three spatial dimensions, be said to exist? How can it be extant with no extent, as it were? We can write down a lot of things mathematically, like infinity, for example, that are useful to solve problems about the real universe but don't actually exist themselves. How can infinity carry any ontological weight? There are an infinite number of numbers between any two numbers, sure, but numbers are abstractions; they are not real things in the real world, but instead they are properties of things in the world. Similarly, a point is a mathematical abstraction - a way to specify this number exactly - but a thing can't be a point, can it? We would have to know its location to infinite precision (and as I've said, it would have zero extent).

Points are difficult for physics. Zeros and infinities make black holes, which tear apart the very fabric of space and time. Singularities (like black holes) are a sign that something is wrong with our theories or that they are incomplete. The embarrassment of naked black holes is covered up with event horizons, which hide the awkward theoretical rip in space-time. But it is interesting to me, in a very Zen way, how zero and infinity are reciprocals of each other - divide by zero to get infinity, and divide by infinity to get zero. They are inverses, so in some way they're the same - zero is infinity, just viewed upside-down. Everything is nothing.


The second set of italics above, "to aspire is better than to be blindly and impotently happy," is interesting for a completely different reason. Here is the Point making a very profound (to me) point about existence, and yet the higher-dimensional beings call him vile and ignorant. His happiness is a reflection of his ignorance of the higher dimensions (or really any dimensions at all), and this is obviously to be scorned. In some ways I sympathize; the Point is certain that he knows all there is to know, by virtue of being his entire Universe, so while we can't exactly blame him, he is completely and utterly wrong. He hears the Square speak, and thinks it his own thoughts. Being wrong is uncomfortable, but I value the attempt at being right (the aspiration for knowledge, not knowledge itself) more than being ignorant, certain, and blissful.

And yet:

"Infinite beatitude of existence! It is; and there is none else beside It. It fills all Space," continued the little soliloquizing Creature, "and what It fills, It is. What It thinks, that It utters; and what It utters, that It hears; and It itself is Thinker, Utterer, Hearer, Thought, Word, Audition; it is the One, and yet the All in All. Ah, the happiness ah, the happiness of Being!"

 Ah indeed, the happiness of Being. What an intriguing and enticing ignorance!
 

Inspirational

You know those inspirational messages that pop up on social media? Sometimes they're a quotation from a semi-famous person, sometimes just a sentence or phrase, and your friend seems to think they contain wisdom worth sharing. Sometimes they're your friend's own wisdom they came up with themselves. Well, I've come up with one that pretty much sums up them all. No further inspirational messages need to be shared, now that we have this:

Whenever I see a message like this, some or all of these thoughts go through my head:

• That is trivial and meaningless.
• That is not even good advice.
• STOP TELLING ME HOW TO BE!
• I guess some people get inspiration from this... why do I hate everything?

I don't want to come up with specific examples because I don't want to pick on anyone. Seriously, if you get little happy neurons to fire in your brain because you feel like you understand something about life and you want to cement this feeling of "getting it" by sharing it with your friends... believe me, I understand what that's like. Have you read my blog?

But I stop myself all the time from posting little snippets of "wisdom" because I eventually think they are just as trivial, or not good advice for some reason or other, or because I don't want to tell people how to be. (And I hate everything.) As if I could get people to think more critically about the world just by telling them to.

For example, when I see trivial nonsense like the above, I want to say, "But it's human to do or feel bad things, so stop beating yourself up about it! Good and bad are meaningless social constructions anyway! What's important is to do what you do and feel what you feel! But that is just as meaningless, so don't listen to me, please carry on with your life!" So instead I say nothing.

I think most of the reason this stuff bothers me is because I don't think we need to be telling each other what's the right way to think or feel or act. There is no right way to think or feel or act. We need to stop giving each other advice and focus on understanding each other better. But of course, that is itself advice on the right way to be. I can't win!

Fuck it.

DO OR FEEL GOOD THINGS, everyone.

Eat, Drink, and Be Meriadoc

In the beginning there was Eru, the One, and he created the Ainur, and they made the world with their song. And then, some considerable time later, during the Fourth Age, someone posted this link on Facebook. And I knew that I had just been witness to The Greatest Idea Ever: a Lord of the Rings movie marathon hobbit feast. I knew I had all three extended editions of LOTR at Mom's, and that I would soon be there myself; and I knew that we would be watching the 2nd Hobbit film, and that I would again try to read The Hobbit to my nephew - which, given how little I see him and how quickly he falls asleep, is going to take FOREVER. Therefore I emailed my family and said "Make It So." And it was.

I'm sure my loyal readers need no assurance of my Tolkien Geek Cred. As the great link says, food is very important in Tolkien's world, a fact of which I'm well aware. Obviously food is important to the Hobbits, but as a theme it appears in very many places throughout both Bilbo's and Frodo's adventures. Whenever there is a respite from the toils of the road, there is a description of plain and simple food that makes "a loaf with honey and cream" sound like the most delicious thing ever. And when Frodo and Sam make it to Ithilien and Sam finally gets to use his pots and cook a brace of conies, and in the movie they never get a chance to eat it!, I just weep, knowing how starving they are and will be.

Sure, Mordor is terrible and the ring is a heavy burden, but having no food to get you there? How can a hobbit hope to go on?

Here follows an account of The Great Feast of 2014, in which we were too full and tired to even bother with the last course and skipped straight to dessert. We accompanied the food with (if I remember correctly) a sampler of New Belgium ales, red wine, and sherry. We couldn't find any decent mead, but at least we tried.

First Breakfast - 8am

Blackberry tarts from Bree. As the recipe says,

There was hot soup, cold meats, a blackberry tart, new loaves, slabs of butter and half a ripe cheese: good plain food, as good as the Shire could show.

Though I probably didn't put enough sugar in these, and the blackberries never quite liquified like I thought they would, the tarts were perfect and I want one now.

Second Breakfast - 9am, start FOTR

 

Fried eggs, tomatoes, crispy bacon, and ham. There is no recipe for this because who needs a recipe for this? I know how to fry an egg. Also, I'm assuming you all know what LOTR, FOTR, TTT, and ROTK mean because I expect a minimum of intelligence from my readers.

Elevenses - 11am

Elven Lembas Bread. This was the hit of the day. My nephew literally could not stop talking about it, and not being able to say "lembas" did not stop him.

Luncheon - 1pm, start TTT

Mushroom Soup from the Inn at Bree. Barliman really knows his cooking and apparently has access to a blender or food processor.

Afternoon Tea - 3pm

Lavender & Lemon Muffins, served with Portsmouth tea. The lemon extract we found in Mom's cupboard was probably less than 20 years old and totally okay to use.

Dinner - 5pm, start ROTK

 

Roast Mutton for the Trolls, with Shire pudding. (Get it? Yorkshire pudding??) OMG delicious. I'd never made yorkshire pudding before, and I decided it was like pancakes cooked in meat drippings. Lovely.

 

Supper - 7pm 

 

Daddy Twofoot's Eggplant Parm. There are no pictures because we never got around to this, plus we were at least an hour behind schedule. And since the 7th meal is technically outside the cannon, being part of the movie and not part of the books, we didn't feel obligated to follow our delicious lamb with some cheesy vegetables. Instead we went on to....

Dessert

We made ten cup ranger cookies, mostly because I really liked the description, "for Rangers in the field who only have one measuring cup with them." At this point we were done with pictures, so instead here's my niece, who had fun getting in our faces and messing with our food.

A new/old supernova/star is born/dead

If this were a science blog, I would be all over the discovery of a Type Ia Supernova in a very nearby galaxy. I mean, I used to work on Supernovae Ia! Though the ones I studied were admittedly very far away... and though they were admittedly only simulated, i.e. not real at all... well, after I simulated them I treated them as real... but what does "real" even mean in this sense? How are data points from a "real" supernova different than data points from a simulated one? What is the ontology of simulation?

Where was I?

Oh yes, that's right: "Woohoo! This is a cool thing for science!" is something I would be saying if this were a science blog. I would talk about how close the supernova is, using analogies that would help you understand how something incredibly far away is practically next door on the scale of THE UNIVERSE. (It's so close the galaxy is a Messier object, M82, with a name, the "Cigar Galaxy.") But others are doing that. I'm more interested in how contemplating the scale of THE UNIVERSE can make us feel simultaneously very small and very important.

I mean, we, as human beings, are already an unimaginably small dot on the Earth which is incredibly tiny compared to our Sun, not to mention the vast emptiness of space that separates the Earth from the Sun, which, cosmologically speaking, is practically buzzing with debris and not empty at all... and of course, cosmologically speaking, the Sun doesn't even register as an infinitesimally small speck in a mediocre galaxy in the unfathomable hugeness of space. It takes light a mere 8 minutes to reach us from the Sun, but light from this new supernova has been traveling to us for 11.4 million years! And it is a nearby event! The star died 11.4 million years ago, and the supernova explosion marking its death happens on the scale of a month. And here we are to observe it, sitting on our planet in a nearby galaxy, focusing our prisms and mirrors on this awesome event, cozy with our blankets and hot chocolate (stay warm, USA) in the knowledge that our Sun won't die on us for at least another 5 billion years.

I might talk about how the news is making some of my colleagues as excited as kids in a candy shop. There is so much astrophysical data and in so many colors! (That is an Astronomy joke, by the way. Feel free to laugh.) And I would show some pretty pictures, if this were a science blog, for sure. Wait, I can still do that... hold on... there:

From Astronomy Picture of the Day; Image Credit & Copyright: Adam Block, Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter, U. Arizona

If this were a science blog, I could talk about how it's so bright, and getting brighter still, that anyone with access to clear skies and small telescopes can see this new point of light for themselves. But others are doing that too. And I'd rather imagine what it might be like, looking through an eyepiece up into the sky at a dying star in another galaxy... sure, the image itself might not be spectacular, but knowing what it is brings so much more.

I have a small telescope, and I've seen Jupiter and its moons. But without that knowledge, all you can see is a smallish dot with a few smaller dots around it sort of along a straight line, and if you're lucky, the biggest smallish dot has some dark lines across it. The experience is less meaningful if you don't know that you're looking at another planet, which is very big and very far away. I don't mean knowing the names of Jupiter and its moons, or how far away they are, or any details like that, is important... but looking at Jupiter, or this new supernova, without knowing its place in the pattern is like seeing a puzzle piece without any picture on it - basically, meaningless. And that is the magic of learning, and of science - turning a bunch of pieces of a puzzle into a beautiful picture, or even an ugly picture when you get down to it, but a picture nonetheless of something you understand. I would even say that understanding by itself is beautiful, and that understanding something ugly turns it into something beautiful - not beautiful in the sense of aesthetically pleasing, but in a larger meaning - whole and right and beautiful. Of course, I can say all of that because this isn't a science blog.

If it were, I would talk about how this particular type of supernova was responsible for the discovery that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, and how this messes with our understanding of cosmology in a fundamental way. Actually, I might write about that one day... but this supernova is so close, it's unlikely to answer those fundamental questions.

What I would really talk about, if this were a science blog, is how this particular type of supernova is responsible for the creation of all heavy elements, without which life as we know it would not be possible. You may have heard that "we are made of star stuff" because of the creation of all elements heavier than Helium (and trace Lithium) in the nuclear furnaces of stellar cores. (Or you might have heard that "if you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the Universe.") But all elements heavier than iron (and most of the iron) can only be created in the special conditions of a stellar death - the massive energy of a star collapsing in on itself and exploding in a supernova. Of course, I would check all of my facts before saying things like that, if this were a science blog.

I would focus on the creation of heavy elements because this supernova is the perfect metaphor for the un-metaphorizable, the awe and the awesome, the "Tao" or "Brahman" or "whatever, none of that is real" or whatever you want to call it. It is creation and destruction at once: the creation of the possibility for life, as the elements in its ejecta travel out to one day find their way into new stars of their own - or possibly into the planets around that star and eventually the life on those planets; but also, it is the destruction of the possibility for life as the death of a life-giving star itself. In order for there to be life, there has to be death, in the heavens as it is on Earth.

Amen.

Working While Sick

Sometimes when you're at work and trying to focus on the task at hand, your body has other plans for you. You might have a cold or a hangover and find it hard to concentrate, but since it's not a "real" sickness you stick it out as long as you can... you just drink water and hold off until you can go home and nap because you don't want to take sick time or because missing work due to a hangover is too shameful to imagine.

But for some of us (approximately half), our bodies sometimes sabotage us while at work in another way, not a cold or hangover or depression, that in addition to not feeling like a "real" sickness worth going home for, going home would feel like betraying decades of struggle for gender equality in the workplace.

Of course I'm talking about menstrual cramps.

What to do when you get bad cramps at work? I've come up with a few options:

1. Do drugs. (OTC painkiller)
2. Eat chocolate and pretend it also works as a painkiller.
3. Take a walk until it gets better.
4. Take a walk to find some drugs.
5. Take a walk to your house and stay there.
6. Suck it up and pretend you can still do meaningful work because women can do anything men do including write coherent emails while bleeding painfully from the inside.

Today, not having number 1, I tried number 2 and contemplated 3 through 5 until it passed, which means I successfully carried out number 6. I've done number 5 in the past but there is always the guilt.

I absolutely cannot stand when women are referred to as "the weaker sex." I mean sure, on average men have greater strength and muscle mass, but just because they can - on average - bench press more seems a pretty narrow criterion with which to define a whole gender as weaker. And then I get bad cramps and think, "well damn, this would be quite a disadvantage if I was being attacked by a mountain lion right now" or "if I was out hunting wildebeast" or whatever prehistoric men used their muscle mass for... it was probably for fighting other prehistoric men, but anyway.... my point is, it feels like Nature is trying to remind me that women were intended to be weaker whenever my uterus punches my insides.

Obviously I think it would be better if all sicknesses were treated equally. For anything that makes it impossible for someone to work productively - with the possible exception of the hangover because you only did that to yourself - it should be up to that person how to deal with it, whether they go home, nap on a workplace couch, cry in the bathroom, take a walk, or stick it out and pretend nothing is happening.

Personally, I would suggest having some dark chocolate, because it is possible it also works as a painkiller and may have other curative properties.

Disclaimer: As an academic I can pretty much do what I want, so I don't really know what the constraints are in a real workplace setting when you have a "not quite sickness." This is another reason why science wins.