The Nerd's Eye View

Hey you. Yeah. YOU. You know me, right? You've met me or emailed me or read this blog (highly unlikely) or seen the many techy things I've posted to MyFace or whatever the young folks are using these days. You know that I am an engineer with an ax to grind, defending analytical rigor, science and the left brain with all the vigor of a tea party "patriot" in line for Sarah Palin's 'book'. So you'll be as surprised as I was at the response that a TED conference speaker's talk elicited.

The talk covers the subject of whether or not schools teach creativity and what the implications of that are for the future. The thesis of the talk is that the current method of education does a great job of training students to be cogs in the industrial-era machine, but it doesn't do a good job of teaching any of us to be creative. This creativity is of course necessary for engendering future innovations, although the talk is heavy with talk of the arts, dance, etc.

It got me wondering whether I had some of that same creativity. After all, I do write this, among other things, I draw, and so on. But is it really creativity, or just something I do to give the illusion of creativity and cultivate that "Renaissance man" image that I crave. Yeah, I can admit it. I know for a fact that I am a product of the education factory, molded into an engineer with the "slide-rule grip" and exciting "mouse action" arms. So does my desire for creative expression mean that the system has failed (either at stamping out creativity, or encouraging it)? The whole thing leaves me wondering what future education would be like in a regime like this - would we all try to be dancers or painters or singer/songwriters (please, God, not that); conversely, who will spend their time building things and making things. Indeed, considering the suffering of artists who struggle to express themselves, is all the creativity even going to make everyone happy? And how much of this question is legitimate or an attempt to justify my own experience? All questions that can't be easily answered.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 11:53 AM | Permalink

When I was 11 years old, I stood on my bed and looked at the books on the highest shelf of the bookcase that my parents had kept in my room. There were a lot of books there that my Dad had put there to relieve the overflow on the big bookcase in the living room, but most of them were "boring". Still, I had just finished my latest Hardy Boys book and wanted to keep reading (where has that feeling gone?) and picked a book that was about the same size. It had a maroon cover with simple yellow letters on it that spelled out the title and the author's name. I opened the book to page one and read this:

“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”

I gasped, laughed and reread it. Then I debated whether or not to read the passage out loud for my Dad in case he decided I was too young to be reading that sort of thing. Finally I did and he laughed with me, and smiled, probably remembering when he had first read the Catcher in the Rye. I read that book then, then again two years later, then again 2 years after that, then again when I got to college. It was simply written and brilliant and I loved it. Who was J.D. Salinger that he had so easily written a book that described everything and so perfectly?

It appears that he died yesterday, quietly. I hadn't ever read his other works, partly out of laziness and partly because there's no way anything could measure up to Catcher. Now I feel a bit foolish, as we say goodbye to him from beyond the fence. I guess I'd better start reading.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 4:14 PM | Permalink

It's been raining cats and dogs around here since last week, which is a welcome change from the gloomy but ultimately dry weather we had been having. The rain has been so heavy that for the first time in a long time, I've been on a road with very low visibility and a good chance of hydroplaning. Everywhere you go there's lots of standing water and I'm surprised at how poor the drainage is all up and down the Peninsula. It seems like the only drainage is going through the freeway signs which can't stand up to the water coming from the sky, and are garbled and useless. Traffic of course is insane in these conditions with people undecided over whether to slow down to a crawl or take advantage of all the space left by cautious people to speed to their destinations. More often than not I find myself practically parked on the 101 watching rain drops bounce off the hood of the car, or get slapped around by the windshield wipers.

Strangely (or perhaps not so strangely) this brought up all kinds of memories, starting first with childhood memories from NY. Riding home from school in the Mission station wagon, watching the rain on the asphalt and fogging up the glass with my breath. It was always so stuffy in there, in a the back of a car filled with fidgety kids who just wanted to be home. We were always the last on the route, and had ample time to zone out to the mixed white noise of rain and traffic. This is a pretty weird memory for me since I haven't thought about it in a good long time. Mainly, it's the amalgamation of thoughts and memories from a thousand rainy days in the seven years we lived in NYC when I was little.

That was idyllic compared to the strongest memory of rain that I had. In August 1988 we were living in Khartoum, and the rainy season (the khareef) was almost on us. School had just started a week prior and was ramping up as quickly as it usually did. That evening we'd had something to eat and the moved the mattresses out to the courtyard where we would all sleep to escape the stifling heat in the house. Sleep came quickly but it seemed like no time before I was awoken by my father shaking my shoulder. "It's raining, get the mattresses inside," but we were woken up again afterward. The roof was leaking throughout the house, and water was rushing in from under the doors. We rushed to plug the gaps up with towels or rags or whatever was at hand, and to put pots under the leaks in the roof which seemed to be everywhere. Before long we were bailing the house out like the Titanic, and continued till 4 or 5am, as the sounds of white noise on the roof faded to silence.

We woke up the next morning to a muddy and partly serene world, with not a cloud in the sky. Wish the same would happen here soon.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 10:06 AM | Permalink

Last week, on Tuesday and Thursday, I had two separate experiences so similar it seemed like deja vu. On both days there were earthquakes nearby strong enough to make my chair shake and the ductwork overhead sway and creak. Despite the years of thinking about it and mental preparation since I moved to California, I was rooted to my chair both times. Fortunately, each time the quake was relatively quick and of low intensity, and so I could saunter out to the parking lot and make sure that the world wasn't ending before heading back in to continue tapping away at my computer. This nonchalance has been hard won, and is also a result of being in a place where the law mandates good enough building codes to ensure that a small tremor doesn't mean death by rubble. This was not always so.

Cairo: 1992
When I was living in Egypt 18 years ago (jeez, that's a long time), I recall going to a show at the Cairo Opera House with some friends. It was my first time in the opera house which is an impressive building inside and out, and I had great mezzanine seats for the performance of Carmen. In the middle of the 1st act, as Carmen was tempting scoundrels and officers alike, I felt my seat move, and it didn't stop. I looked up at the massive chandelier on the ceiling and it was moving too, the small crystals clinking together and making a pleasant sound ominous. At first the orchestra played on, until they noticed that the conductor had left the podium and, indeed, the orchestra pit. They slowly stopped playing in fits and starts, and began to exit. Even then, the singers on the stage kept singing until it was obvious there would be no more music. By then of course the earthquake (since that's what it was) had subsided. Moments later the conductor came back out, we all clapped, and tried to ignore the fact that there had been a seismic event in a place where it was pretty much unheard of. My friends and I enjoyed the rest of the show and tried to pretend all was well. That night large portions of the poorer neighborhoods in Cairo collapsed and in the City of the Dead fires raged.

Khartoum: 1993
The summer after I was interning at Stack Labs at the University of Khartoum's medical school. I was doing data entry and other sorts of computer work, which was a nice change of pace and getting paid a pittance for it. Still it kept me out of the house which was nice, especially considering how much cooler the Stack building was than our house with the power out as it usually was on summer days. The Stack building was at the time one of the highest buildings in the city, and when it began to shake during lunch, we could hear the grinding of masonry. The room was filled with female researchers and physicians - I stood, unsure whether to stay still and keep everyone calm or to turn tail and run (ungentlemanly? cowardly? yes). Mercifully the shaking stopped quickly and we could all discuss the thrill of what had just happened. That night, as we slept in the courtyard it happened again, but I didn't hear about it till the next morning. Then the news was full of people whose houses had collapsed on them, and children who had had their heads crushed by cinder blocks falling off poorly constructed roofs. People were terrified and I was ashamed of my falsely cavalier behavior the day before.

Haiti: 2010
I imagine that it must have been similar in Port-au-Prince a couple of days ago. Unless you live in California (and even then) you cannot conceive of the earth moving unbidden. It is the most solid, reliable thing in your life and when it moves it is terrifying. Then your house falls down, or you stand by looking at a pile of rubble that was your house and you know that your mother or father or brother or sister is in there. I won't go on about the feeling of helplessness which compounds the usual feeling of helplessness that comes of living a place where you are the mercy of an arbitrary authority, where the largest part of your economy is the remittances of expatriates. Every image makes me think of that morning in Khartoum 17 years ago. So I did what I hope all of you have done already which is to donate some money. If you haven't already, please do. If you can donate something more valuable (medical skills) you might want to do that too ...

Red Cross
PIH

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 9:57 AM | Permalink