Depressed Thoughts

At least half, if not more, of my depressed thoughts involve trying to figure out my depressed thoughts:

What is this.... am I feeling lonely? But I was hanging out with cool new people this weekend. Am I afraid? Why can't I just do what I need to do... Is it because people expect things of me? I had a good run of not being depressed, but that seems to be coming to an end. But I was feeling so good yesterday! How do other people manage? Why can't I focus! I just need to make some plots, just get something going. My brain is out to get me again. I'll never make it as a scientist...

It is the ultimate mindfuck. I become at war with myself. "Oh man, I suck because X and Y." "But X and Y are irrational, and what's more, not even true. Here's some empirical evidence." "I know, I'm so irrational! I SUCK!"

I've read better descriptions of how depression messes with you, but they are lost on the internet.

Currently, I'm not quite at the "I SUCK" part, and nowhere near the complete lack of motivation for anything phase, but my brain feels like cotton and I feel inadequate. Even writing this is making me feel guilty, like I am making up excuses for laziness.

So, what can I do about it?

My first response was to eat some chocolate. But my bar of Green & Black's 85% is getting small. Then I started writing this. Next I will identify some small and easy things to put on/check off my To Do list. After that, I might go home. Whether I can go home without guilt is the tricky part. If it doesn't seem like I can get rid of the guilt, I might stare at some code for a while to give myself a chance to do work. I will also look through a special esteem-boosting email folder I started a little while ago, prompted by more internet advice. I don't know whether reading things that once upon a time made me feel good about myself will do the same now, but it's better than letting the depressed thoughts feed on themselves, using my brain as a host.

Finally, what I'm going to do is post this, because writing it seems to have helped. Because even though I'm not looking for sympathy, not making excuses, and even though I'm not that depressed... this shit is real and sucks and I'm going to complain about it on the internet.

The Philosophy of Cosmology, or: What I Didn't Spend Three Weeks Doing This Summer

Sit a while, and let me tell you a story. About hopes. About fears. About an epic battle between science and philosophy, and a lone blogger caught in the crossfire...

It starts way back in February. There I am, checking Sean Carroll's blog (a cosmologist who regularly blogs about philosophy, i.e. me if I had fame and tenure and was better at blogging), when what do you know, there is a call for applications for a Summer Institute on the Philosophy of Cosmology! My hobby and my day job all rolled up into one!

My first instinct is that I need to apply because Believe in Your Dreams. (Uncertainty Phase 1: Excitement.)

Then after a bit of research, I decide I do not trust the motives of the Templeton Foundation, and I'm not going to get in anyway, so why bother? (Uncertainty Phase 2: Insecurity.)

Uncertainty Phase 3 then slips into cold hard reality...

In tandem with researching the people involved with the Philosophy of Cosmology institute, I watched the Moving Naturalism Forward videos, which seemed the natural thing to do once I was in a philosophical mood. One of the speakers, who was a physicist and is now a philosopher, talks about the practical differences of the two academic fields to emphasize that as a scientist, you just don't have the luxury of taking a broader view and reading literature in related fields - at least not until you go on sabbatical or get old and philosophical! There are teaching duties, overseeing graduate students, solving practical problems in the lab, and writing a ton of grant proposals to occupy your time, and there is only so much time in the day.

The cold hard reality of the situation is that perhaps I don't have the luxury to spend a day thinking about philosophical issues, much less three weeks, because it's normal - even expected - for postdocs to work on weekends. Sure, not all do, and sure, mostly this is my guilt and insecurity about not working enough, but I don't hear faculty talking about how much they slacked off as postdocs. I hear them talk about how much sleep they didn't get. It turns out I love sleep. I also like to pretend to be profound and pretend to be philosophical, but that's not something I should have the time to do as a serious scientist. Crap.

Despite all that, I convince myself (and let friends convince me) to apply anyway. (Uncertainty Phase 4: Action. slash Believe in Your Dreams and Figure Out Later Whether They Are Your Actual Dreams.)

Cut to April, when the most annoying thing happens.

I get in.

Uncertainty Phases 1 through 3 kick in all at once! Of course I'm super excited about getting in, but actually going would mean keeping up with philosophers for three weeks (and actually talking to them! Ahh!)... and then there's the added annoyance that a very relevant conference overlaps with the philosophy institute, and because time only moves in one direction, I can't do both. (WTF, time?)

I almost resolve myself to do it despite my misgivings. Abandon Certainty and Follow Your Bliss and all that. But there's that nagging question of the actually-relevant-to-my-job conference. If you are aware enough to notice things like blog post titles, perhaps you can see where this is going. I get the word from the higher-ups: "if you want a job in astrophysics, go to the science conference. you will be able to do this interdisciplinary stuff once you have a permanent position (if you have time! because no one has time to do anything as a professor, haha!)." I may have paraphrased just a little bit, but the message is clear: scientists are interested in science and nothing else.

Believe in Your Dreams... Later.

This signaled to me that the paranoia behind why I don't have my full name on here or link here from my actual website turned out to be justified. Perhaps I didn't intentionally plan it that way, but at some point I realized that I definitely don't want potential employers to read this blog. First, some would see it as indicating that I'm not serious about science, or think that blogging takes away from time better spent doing research. If this blog were only about science, that would probably be okay - but most of the time I would rather talk about "somethingness" and "nothingness" and "wait what does that even mean?"

Which brings me to my second point: I sometimes write about personal shit and sometimes write about Chakras and sometimes mention how time is an illusion or discuss the unity of duality. Who would hire a scientist who doesn't believe in time? (Of course, I do, really, insofar as "believing in time" is even a useful concept... and of course I don't literally think that chakras are pools of energy in the body that we can open by meditation and yoga... but metaphors are useful and logic can be boring!) Not only am I philosophical, but I have weird ideas...

In hindsight, the science conference did turn out to be very worth it and good for my research/career. Also, as a bonus, the philosophy of cosmology lectures were all put online and seem to be mostly on topics in which I'm not particularly interested... not that it wouldn't have been awesome, but the actual awesomeness level of counterfactuals is impossible to determine. (Again, unidirectional time. What a let-down.) Anyway, another philosophy of cosmology opportunity may come again, and meanwhile maybe I will write about the Copernican vs. Cosmological Principles and how no one understands them because cosmologists are bad at philosophy.

I guess the moral of the story is: Believe in Your Dreams Even If You Don't Necessarily Follow Them All the Time.

Things

I had envisioned writing this months ago. I would arrive in England, unpack my boxes, re-discover what books I had decided to ship across an ocean, and write about what they mean. These are the books I could not live without (or could not fit into my storage boxes) - that meant so much to me I would pay serious money and cause myself serious mental anxiety to have with me.

It turns out they caused me even more mental anxiety when that box simply did not arrive in England! I had my few cosmology textbooks and a few books I put in my luggage, but not the bulk of my favorite books and DVDs. Apparently I did not need them enough to get over my calling-businesses-on-the-phone anxiety (yes, I have anxiety issues, and that makes me anxious...) so I just hoped they would show up and planned to buy them all again until miraculously, a few days before Christmas, they were returned to my mom's house. (Custom's thought I owed duty fees but never bothered to send me a bill. Asshats.)

All of this strongly reinforces what I already knew, and what made moving out of a house I lived in for 6 years so hard, which is that I love my things. A book is not just a book but the experience I had reading it, over and over for my favorite books. I like to look at my things and have special places to put them. Even in the game Skyrim, I love how I can display my books on a bookshelf, armor on a mannequin, and special weapons I no longer use on a weapon rack. Sometimes I try to arrange the books by theme, because what matters is not that I have a bunch of things, but that I have a place for the things I care about, even when they are fantasy things in a fantasy world.

So what about my real books? (And DVDs while I'm at it.) It will surprise no one that I have very special copies of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, and even The Children of Hurin, two of which I brought in my luggage and the other two I packed, leaving the rest of my Tolkien books (you bet there are lots!) to storage. I'm actually glad The Hobbit was in the lost box because that means it is here now and I am reading it to my nephew. The DVDs were mostly movies that I don't have pirated copies of, but especially all 3 LOTR extended edition DVDs. Other fantasy books I brought or packed are the His Dark Materials trilogy by Phillip Pullman and all 7 Harry Potter books, plus The Tales of Beedle the Bard. I probably debated whether to pack Dune (all 6) or HP, deciding that HP belonged in England. To round out the fantasy genre I also packed Legend. (I will accept no criticism. It is awesome.)

Next I packed The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts, a book on Guided Meditations by Stephen Levine, and The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, because, you know, deep thoughts and stuff. Then there's an awesome old book of the collected writings of John Steinbeck which contains my favorite, East of Eden. Deep thoughts in that one too. DVDs in this theme include I Heart Huckabees and a Joseph Campbell compilation, Sukhavati (I guess the Power of Myth was too big for the box). I will have to either find place in my luggage or download these in preparation for my next existential crises. I also packed The Matrix set of DVDs, which arguably goes here in the Deep Thoughts section, but that will take another blog post of explaining (and room in my luggage). I miss having my things!

The rest is a less meaningful hodgepodge of useful (Julia Child's French cookbook, Chocolate Desserts, French for Reading, Spanish phrase book, and a Guide to Madrid), not yet read (The World of Dreams (a collection of essays), volume one of Sandman by Neil Gaiman, and The House of Seven Gables), and awesome (Kung Fu Panda 2, Avatar: The Last Airbender volume 1, and Planet Earth). Maybe it's not as interesting as I thought it would be to learn that I like fantasy and metaphysics (and cartoons featuring martial arts). Sorry for boring you! But I do believe that the things people value tell a story about who they are.

I will have to figure out what I can fit on the trip back. Obviously I don't need these things. I can live without them. But I want my flat in England to be my home, "where the rooms are a collection of our lives," and for that I need my things.

Life

On the Friday after Thanksgiving my niece Autumn Rayne was born. I think she has my eyebrows, or at least my default cynical expression.

But maybe I am just looking for things that aren't there.

There are a million things I could wax philosophical about at this point. Life! There is a new person in the world! Although she is currently spending her time sleeping, peeing, and sucking, she will be rapidly learning new things in the near future... smiling! holding things! What wonders the world will bring!

There are a million things I could ruminate about, including how frustrating it is to be 5 time zones away, but I keep thinking about death. When I waxed philosophical about (mostly metaphorical) death it was to stress that without death there would be no life, because there would be no change. But that doesn't seem to work the other way around... it is not useful nor wise to think about life in terms of death. Life is the upswing, the start, the beginning of growth. Life speaks for itself, but death cannot. Life needs no explanation because life is.

Just a few days ago Autumn was safe inside her mother's womb. Things won't be so easy from now on. She will have to confront a steady stream of things-she-can't-do, one by one, and turn them into things-she-can-do. She will have 4 older brothers, 2 crazy aunts, and every toy and piece of clothing she will get for the next 10 years will be pink. What if she doesn't like pink? Let's just hope that she does!

New life means endless uncertainty. (Some good and some bad.) There is no limit to what she could do or be and we are free to speculate that it will all be awesome. And why not?

Welcome to your life, Autumn.

Uncertainty Sucks. Happy Leap Day!

I'm taking this leap day opportunity to 1) fit in a post in February, and 2) veer from my usual Abandon Certainty mantra. It turns out that uncertainty sucks!

In some sense it is a luxury to abandon certainty, in terms of opening yourself up to the wonders of being alive, without assuming that you know the answers, and embracing change over stability. But there is little wonder in the uncertainty of not knowing where or whether you will be employed, when that next paycheck will come in, whether you will have enough food to feed your kids, and similar issues that too many people worry about every day. Perhaps the difference is in whether you are actively abandoning certainty or whether uncertainty has been thrust upon you.

Over the years I have interpreted this in terms of both Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and the Hindu Chakras. Before one can take an existential leap (pun intended!) into the unknown, one must first deal with the basic needs of nutrition, health, personal safety, etc. This is similar in spirit to the chakra hierarchy, where the three basal chakras dealing with survival, pleasure, and willpower must be opened before the heart chakra, which deals with openness and love. So perhaps the uncertainty that sucks is about basic needs which, if not met, become a barrier to experiencing the uncertainty that is awesome.

As this current and prolonged period of uncertainty about my future continues (seriously, this is a painfully slow metaphorical death), I am finding it quite hard to experience anything awesome about uncertainty. It sucks and I hate it and it is causing stress, anxiety, and depression. I'm losing sight of where I am and where I'm going as if my life is guided by some existential uncertainty principle. My existential wave function had better collapse soon. Is the existential cat metaphorically alive or dead??

OK, OK, enough with the quantum physics analogies. Happy leap day everybody. Today is a day to remember that the Earth takes 365.25 days to travel around the Sun. Enjoy the fact that this is yet another day where you can eat, sleep, and breathe, and worry about everything else another day.

Jobs and Gender

There has lately been a bit of a scandal in (a very narrow segment of) the science community regarding a story published in Nature's Futures section called "Womanspace" by Ed Rybicki. Check it out for yourself, and then see which of the comments match your own opinions on the piece. There have been many blogs about it, including one by Ed in response to the outrage, that I am still reading and absorbing, and if I was on twitter I would probably start using the #womanspace tag, but a full blog post on this will have to wait.

What's more pressing currently is job season. In astronomy this is the time of year for postdocs, fellowships, and faculty positions to appear on the job register and rumor mill. I've been writing proposals, research summaries, research statements (which is incredibly vague and annoying), and finishing up papers. This morning I was sent a notice for new postdoc positions in my field. It turns out they're looking for people with different expertise than I possess, but sometimes it's nice not to have to apply for another job. And then I read the end of the advert and find myself back in #womanspace:

"Applications from disabled persons are encouraged and will be favoured when equally qualified. [The University] is committed to increase the percentage of female employees in sectors where they are underrepresented. We want to especially encourage female applicants to apply for these positions."

Now, as a female, I don't feel especially encouraged after reading these words. The intent is in the right place, but this type of disclaimer, I feel, only serves to promote the notion that women/minorities/disabled and other underrepresented groups only get accepted (to college, grad school, jobs) because of their demographic and not because they are qualified. The common conception that "all other things being equal" we will hire a woman or minority - held by those who believe they want to help - actually does more to hurt by reinforcing the Other-ness of these groups and down-playing their abilities, which is what all agree should matter in these situations. Consciously, people who think this way are saying "Your Other-ness is going to be a good thing, not a negative thing." But why should it matter at all? Does this mean that unconsciously, these people think the Other-ness is more important than actual qualifications? I don't want the fact that I'm female to be the deciding factor; I want to feel that I'm actually qualified for a job that I get. This type of thinking also reinforces the Imposter Syndrome in these "Other" groups: if my Other-ness is what got me here, maybe I don't really deserve to be here, I'm just filling a quota, etc.

The other side is how majority groups perceive this type of disclaimer. Those who aren't necessarily advocates for promoting equality among the majority and underrepresented groups see an unfair advantage being given to the Others at the expense of themselves. "These Others are not qualified and they are stealing our jobs! They are explicitly being favored! Not fair!!" Regardless of how fair the selection actually is (and I submit that standard practices give unfair advantages to majority groups because of unconscious biases and stereotypes, and that though this can be eliminated to some extent, the process will never be completely "fair"), the perception of unfairness is in fact quite harmful to all involved and especially to underrepresented groups, who always have to prove themselves with a higher standard just because of this assumption (held by few, not all, but enough to have an effect) that they start out less qualified because their Other-ness has helped them succeed.

There is in fact a growing amount of research into how unconscious biases creep into hiring decisions, including the writing of reference letters, that cause people of different groups (gender, race, etc.) to be judged with different standards. (Test your own unconscious biases here, you might surprise yourself!) After seeing a great talk on this topic by Dr. Abby Stewart, the PandA Diversity group has invited her to talk at JHU. Outright discrimination is much less of an issue these days so some are inclined to think the problem has been solved. Women just don't want to do science, right? As incredibly wrong as this is, and as unsupported by data from many studies that I don't feel like looking up and citing right now, some still do think this is the answer. Some may only think so unconsciously, having never bothered to consciously question their assumptions.

I could go on, but I'm getting into #womanspace issues again that will take more time and effort for me to sort out into a coherent post. Let's continue on with my day, during which I am reminded that the AAS job register has been updated (being the first of the month) and I should check it out. That's when I read this lovely job listing:

The Centre de Physique des Particules de Marseille (CPPM) invites applications for a postdoctoral position in cosmology. The successful candidate will work with Dr. Stephanie X on original cosmological probes using large-scale structure surveys. The position is suitable for a wide range of expertises from theory and data modelling to statistical analysis of large-scale structures of the universe and of N-body simulations.

The successful candidate is expected to interact strongly with researchers of the Center for Theoretical Physics (CPT) and the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille (LAM). He will in particular work directly with Pr. ABC at CPT, who has led the development of new observables to probe the cosmological model. He will have privileged access to data from the BOSS and VIPERS redshift surveys. He is also encouraged to contribute to the science cases of next-generation wide-field surveys such as LSST, BigBoss and EUCLID in the conception of which our laboratories are strongly involved.

Perhaps it's because I've had #womanspace on the brain, but my immediate reaction was to get very angry. "Guess what job I'm not applying for," I tell my roommates. Oh, but the job is in France? It's probably just a translation issue, ain't no thang. (Full disclosure: no one ever actually said "ain't no thang," but they could have.) Other reactions are along the lines of "Oh, those French!" Somehow that failed to be satisfying, though my initial anger had cooled.

Then I noticed that the contact for the job was one Dr. Stephanie X. A woman! "You see!" says my roommate. "Ain't no thang!" (Ok ok, but he could have said that.) So maybe it is only a language issue and not a culture thing (those French with their insensitivity to gender, or something?), but the fact remains that it's not ok and I'm still pissed off. Whether or not I decide to apply (depending on factors other than choice of gender pronoun in the advert), I am seriously considering emailing Dr. X about it. On second thought, probably only if I don't decide to apply. But anyway, every other job listing has managed not to assume that the successful candidates will be male, and I feel like that is something to be encouraged. Whatever the reason how such language made it into the AAS job listing, it is completely unacceptable. Unacceptable!

I guess I'm less pissed off now. The lack of outrage from friends makes it hard to justify continued outrage in what's obviously an unintentional mistake that is completely unacceptable. I won't try to base my decision on whether to apply on this issue, but it will probably be a factor whether I want it to or not at this point. I wonder how many other female graduate students will read this and react with righteous indignation? I wonder if this job will get fewer female applicants compared to others? Of course, what would have been more awesome is if the advert ended with "females are especially encouraged to apply"...

Fear

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

- The Litany Against Fear, Dune, Frank Herbert

I remember only one time when I genuinely said this to myself. There have been many times when I might have thought “Fear is the mind killer” and then gone about my day, but one time I used the litany against fear as an actual litany. I was in the hospital, recovering from the surreal feeling of waking up after general anesthesia. I just had my third knee surgery in as many years and was about to be a senior in high school. The first two surgeries reconstructed my ACL, and I went back to playing soccer each time because that was a core part of my identity. This was supposed to be an exploratory surgery (screws from the first time prevented an MRI) and the doctor hoped the ligament was merely strained and could be fixed. Not the case.

It came unbidden. I don’t remember who told me the news, but I remember thinking it, repeating the whole thing, which I had read Dune enough times to memorize, over and over. I would not be recovered in time to play soccer my senior year. I would have to have another full reconstructive surgery and months of painful rehab, for nothing, because I certainly wasn’t good enough to play in college. (Side note: I ended up playing rugby and I don’t regret it, even though I did tear my ACL again senior year... haven’t had surgery because just thinking about hospitals and IVs and anesthesia fills me with dread and whatever I can run fine everything’s fine...) There’s probably no way for me to really convey what a blow this was, and I don’t exactly want to try, but the litany helped.

Part of it, I think, is that any kind of litany would help in that situation. A mantra that you repeat gives you something to focus on that is not the turmoil of your emotions or the racing of your thoughts, so you are able to just be while the shock wears off. But of course the mantra can’t be something meaningless – I don’t think “red socks red socks red socks” would be very encouraging in a time of crisis – so the litany helped because it is powerful. Fear is the “mind-killer” that prevents me from thinking rationally. I must “face my fear” instead of running away from the way things are. It will “pass over me and through me” because it is insubstantial, it is only fear; it is not the thing I fear and it is not me. “Only I will remain.” Saying the litany against fear or a similar mantra is a stabilizing force, and as we learned from the Avatar TV series, the first chakra (Earth) deals with survival and is blocked by fear.

This is significant, not just because I love that episode and it is one of the best explanations of the chakras I’ve ever heard, but because the chakras represent a hierarchy. You must open the base chakra before the others because spiritual insight or cosmic truth means nothing when you fear for your very survival. Fear is one of our most tangible and powerful emotions, and that is why it is so easily used to manipulate people. The conservative agenda has been very successful with “they are taking away your freedoms,” while loftier ideas of compassion (the heart chakra) and truth (the sound chakra) have much more difficulty taking hold. How can one have compassion for the other when one is afraid of the other?

I won’t go into politics or the culture of fear because it makes me angry, so I will stick with psychology. (I just mistyped “psychoco.” Freudian slip!) The hardest part of dealing with fear is not knowing what you’re afraid of, or even that you’re afraid. It can be hidden under layers of hate, anger, worry, anxiety, or despair. Of course, there’s no easy answer for that, but we could all use a little more introspection and self-awareness, because the things we are afraid of have power over us. We act or react to avoid them, but our fear of them comes from the inability to clearly see things as they are. That spider is not going to do you any harm; it is merely being a spider. That future disaster does not exist, because the future itself does not exist and neither does the past.

Face your fear. Find a point of stability within yourself. Open your Earth chakra. And if you still want to kill that spider, at least it won't be out of fear. ;-)

I'm So Meta, Even This Acronym

I can't concentrate on work right now, but I don't have time write anything deep. Over the last few weeks of not having time to blog, though, I've still been adding to my running list of blog topics that I may one day want to develop into complete thoughts and full sentences. I have too many other sentences to write at the moment - science sentences - so I thought I would post the list as a blog post about blogging. (So Meta.) The newer ideas are on the bottom and older on the top, with the most recent added last night, and I believe this post counts as item 3:

1. Dune, or specifically, the Litany Against Fear. Perhaps a personal account of my exploratory surgery before senior year of high school and how I remember saying it to myself...
2. Philosophy and Cosmology, for example the Anthropic Principle (reference that recent review, was it George Ellis?) or inhomogeneous cosmological models and the Copernican Principle, how that’s often misunderstood to be the Cosmological Principle (or vice versa) 
3. I could always post something less-deep...
4. Empiricism vs. Rationalism
5. ‘Tween t-shirt’ controversy: http://thelook.today.com/_news/2011/09/12/7730480-forever-21s-latest-tween-t-shirt-infuriates-consumers-parents?GT1=43001 and jezebel article (maybe with discussion of PandA Diversity group) 
6. “Floating in the void between theory and observation” (clever idea? clever title at least) 
7. Faster-than-light neutrino or how the universe doesn’t make any sense 
8. Culture of superiority as expressed in Tea Party/media reactions to Occupy Wall Street movement, psychological tendencies to compare/rank yourself with others, sense in physics (and business?) that arrogance interpreted as being confident/knowledgeable… 
9. The Indra simulations and the meaning behind the metaphor of Indra’s net

Since the list was never meant for human consumption, you will have to deal if it makes less sense than my usual posts.  One day, when I have more time for writing non-science sentences (or in some cases, non-research-related-science sentences).... well it still might not make sense, but there will be more of it!

So there we have it, a snapshot of thoughts about deep thoughts.

If you're curious about one of the topics or want me to write about it next, let me know! The idea that someone cares about something might get me to focus on it once I find myself wanting/having time to write non-research sentences... in, let's say, April? :-/

Nature's Wrath

I woke this morning to the sound of thunder. As my alarm was about to go off anyway, this didn't bother me but did what thunder always does, and so I thought to myself, "awesome." I love thunderstorms. I grew up in Florida, which should be called the "Sunshine - except during the afternoon thunderstorm" State, and on many summer nights watching the lightning was our entertainment.

I have always been fascinated by the weather in general, secretly hope to witness a real tornado, and once considered Meteorology as a profession, so crouching under my desk during my first ever earthquake was probably the coolest thing that will happen to me all year. The ground itself was shaking throughout most of the Northeastern United States! Amazing! Much of geology involves slow processes operating over thousands or millions of years, but in an Earthquake, the Earth's crust is disturbed with such force to create pressure waves, like sound waves, that "cause the entire planet to quiver or ring like a bell." How cool is that?!

Such a strong earthquake in this part of the world (the Central Virginia Seismic Zone) is quite rare because the faults are very ancient, having settled down in their old age after spending their wild youth creating the Appalachian Mountains and separating North America from its cross-Atlantic cousins. According to Dr. David Applegate of the USGS (see full transcript here), this is also the reason why these earthquakes are felt so far away from where they occur:

Out in California or in Alaska or where the Earth's plates are grinding against each other, the rock is much more broken up. Here, we have very stable continental crust. It's old crust. It's cold. It transmits the energy very well over long distances.

Additionally, the eroding of the Appalachians has built up thick sediments which amplify shaking. Over 100,000 interested people have weighed-in on what they felt during the earthquake to produce the USGS Community Interest Intensity Map showing that light shaking was felt as far North as Canada.

And now we have a hurricane threatening to make landfall in the same area this weekend. It is another rare thing - hurricanes usually hit much farther South.

Every day, all over the world, Nature shows her wrath. For me, violent weather will always be a reminder that Nature is alive. The forces of Nature are going about their business with complete disregard to how humans are spending their time, but we are not separate from Nature, we are Nature, and Nature is Awesome!

Symbolism and Probability

Last Friday was my birthday and it was a glorious day. Not only did I submit my shiny Paper draft to my collaborators, but after our regular happy our we went to a chocolate happy hour, followed by eating delicious burgers, then drinking wine, and finally closing out karaoke. My sister Kara came up for all of it (except for the Paper part) and we brunched at Golden West on Saturday. She had decided to give me a set of Tarot cards for my birthday, and I wanted the round Motherpeace set that she had, because I believe in the symbolic power of circles.

As luck would have it, the Motherpeace deck was at one of the local Hampden shops, “Crystals, Candles, and Cauldrons” that we stumbled into after brunch! She also got me a crystal that I picked out (turned out to be blood-red calcite which symbolizes vital energy and the opening of the heart chakra! score!). Despite telling her that it would only collect dust in my room, I love the color and the feel of it in my hand. It is both a meaningless rock and a symbol of Great Meaning, which will grow over time because I choose to see it as special. I won’t, however, expect it to cure lower body pains.

We are coming nearer the point now, trust me. Later on Saturday, after a gorgeous hangover nap, I got out the deck, looked at them, read the book, shuffled a lot, and decided to pick out some cards. I would pick a few, one at a time, reading about their meaning and considering how it might apply to me in this moment. The first I picked was the Two of Discs. The book describes the picture as: “A woman nurses twin babies as she is held in a circle by a double-headed snake.” Because the Tarot deck is round, the card can be upright, to the left, to the right, reversed, and anywhere in between, with a different take on the card’s meaning associated with each position. The upright meaning in the book says: “She is able to handle a lot now and there is a great variety of things she does or roles she plays. She can meet many diverse needs.” To me, however, the card appeared to the right, which says: “She’s handling more than her share.”

Well, okay… I don’t actually believe that I’m handling too many things right now, but maybe I could give myself more credit for what I’m actually doing. There’s the Paper that was put off for a long time with a variety of talks, conferences, a summer school, and a good measure of “idontwanna”. Maybe I expect too much of myself to think I should have been doing all of that plus the Paper? But then it’s not like I’ve been working too hard lately (or ever). So okay, that’s what that card says. It’s an interesting card, with the snake weaving itself through two wheels that are on either side of the woman, and with the fact that the snake has two heads.

I first hesitate whether to put the card back in the deck, but then think to myself, what are the chances that I would pull it again? So I shuffle everything for a while and cut the deck again to pick a new card… which is the Two of Discs! The card I just picked! I picked it again! And this time, it appears to the left. I picked the same card twice (a card whose number is two) and in opposite positions! Cue Jack Skellington singing “What does it mean? What does it mean??”

Simultaneously, I am fascinated by all the apparent meanings that I can extract from these events, and I am fascinated by probabilities. There are many examples of things which are a lot more probable than our intuition would tell us, such as the number of people (only 23) you need before the probability that two have the same birthday is greater than 50%. In my case, the probability of choosing a specific card is 1/78, and of choosing that specific card twice is (1/78)*(1/78) = 1/6084. Sounds small, but this only applies if you specify the exact card. The probability of pulling any card twice is only 1/78: given that a card is pulled, the probability of pulling that specific card again is 1/78. It is slightly more than 1% and within 3 standard deviations for a normal distribution, which pulling random cards certainly has. Though 3-sigma events are rare, they happen – even the 1/6084 case is within 4-sigma and falls below the 5-sigma astronomical standard of being a significant event. So who cares?

What can we say other than “that’s interesting”? Well, it turns out we can say a lot, though whether what we say is meaningful is a matter of opinion. While pondering probabilities I was also pondering how I could interpret this occurrence. The Two of Discs to the left says: “She isn’t fully available to everything that pulls on her.” So apparently, I am handling too much, while not being available to everything. This is not obviously contradictory, but I can see how by not being “fully available” I wouldn’t actually be “handling” what I’m taking on, so in that sense it is contradictory… Or maybe I am doing a lot, and by having too much to do I am not doing enough. The suit of Discs represents the Earth or physicality (the others are Swords (air and rationality), Cups (water and emotion), and Wands (fire and energy)), so it relates to tangible things. It is true that I have a lot of (work) things to do (first pull), but also that I don’t feel like I’m actually doing enough (second pull). So, there’s an interesting personal interpretation here that I could take away from the reading and leave it at that.

And then there is symbolism. The two-headed snake is trying to go in opposite directions. The number 2 symbolizes duality, polarity, choice, and receptivity according to the Tarot guide. So the number 2 of discs (circles, the Earth, everything, unity) appears twice but in two opposite directions, and here we have the symbolism of the Yin-Yang, for example. The dual is embodied in the one, the opposites are part of the whole, and what at first appears contradictory is understood to be two different reflections of the same thing. In the realm of the Earth (discs) you have pairs of opposites (night and day, man and woman, up and down, being and non-being). There is choice between one and the other. The two apparently contradictory pulls of the very same card are unified by occurring together.

There is another interpretation besides the unity of polar opposites that could be made, which is embodied in the symbolism of the Fool, the Zero card which is at once the creator goddess and the creation itself (wombic symbolism applies here), also known as the Trickster god. The Fool says, “Don’t take me seriously!” Don’t be stuck on the symbol! The Tarot, crystals, and organized religion are all metaphors that people become lost in by believing they are Real with a capital R. By pulling the same card in opposite positions, the Fool is showing his hand. Everything is possible, but nothing is True.

To wrap up: pulling the same card twice is unlikely, but not by much (not accounting for the directionality), so it’s pretty meaningless. On the other hand, pulling the Two of Discs in opposing positions is very unlikely, and means everything. The choice is yours: meaning is not something that exists out there, but within you.