Sweet is the Air
You know who you are and how special as well:
You know who you are and how special as well:
To Oakland! Holy moly!
I got on a scale some time last year and realized that I weighed more than I ever thought I would. Having grown up on the skinnier side of skinny, seeing 209lbs (94.8kg or 14.9 stone for you folks in Europe) on the scale shakes you up [UPDATE: I am now down to 197lbs! Woot!]. When I saw that, I had two thoughts, both obvious. The second one was: "How did this happen? When did it happen?" Then I did what any rational person would do, I started to work out and eat less and obsess about my weight in my typically half-assed way. Along the way, I started to wonder why I couldn't see any change. I began to wonder how I could keep track of my progress.
I've always kept track of things, but lately it's been very important. Even before my weight, I tracked my gas mileage, my spending (sometimes), I tracked all sorts of garbage. Then I came to understand the role that statistics play in the universe and I was hooked - and ashamed. After all, I might be the only person crazy enough to try this.
But I wasn't. It turns out, there are a great many people who share this habit. I suppose I shouldn't be so surprised. After all, there are far more obsessive people than myself ... and I have to say, I admire them. After all, they are systematic, they are methodical, and they are trying to improve themselves or at least observe the truth of the world, and who can begrudge them that?
Oh San Francisco, you never cease to shock and disgust and slightly titillate. As I was having a run the other day I decided to make it more interesting and ran up the hill to Franklin Park down on Potrero and 16th. As I rounded the chain link fence separating the playground and swings from the rest of the park I spotted an overloaded shopping cart. Near it was an homeless person bundled up and sleeping on the grass. As I mused over the homeless problem, I noticed another figure huddled in the grass a little further along. As I got closer, I realized it was two people, and as I drew level I realized that it was a girl with her shirt half off astride a guy, with a coat covering their mid-sections as they did their best to form the beast with two backs. In the bright daylight, not 50ft from a playground with kids on the swings and the seesaws.
Boy howdy, no matter how many times it happens, it never ceases to shock me. I certainly never know how to react in situations like that. I mean, what do you say? "Excuse me, Sir, Ma'am, but you can't do that." Yeah, it sounds stupid to me too. So I did all I could do which is to trot home and try to put it behind me (unsuccessfully). More tales of life in the city, I guess.
I turned 35 last Sunday and while I'm not one to think too much about aging or my own mortality, I certainly am surprised to be looking around with 35-year-old eyes. I had no idea they were this old until I looked at myself in the mirror after lunch. Then I saw the picture of myself and the family from 1997 that sits on my desk. I think I still look the same (without as much hair of course) but I wonder if that me from 1997 would know that I was him in 2010? I mean he had a really thin neck and his cheeks didn't look like this.
Having said that, I think I'm a lot happier now than when I was back then. I got a great girl who adores me, I have a job that doesn't entirely suck, and let's be honest, I'm sorta living here. That's pretty good, right?
As you can imagine I have a bit of egg on my face due to being a week late (which I'm sure Ada Lovelace would not have stood for at all, being English and a mathematician to boot, as well as a Lady). But when I realized this day was actually so closely past, I couldn't resist the urge to put up a quick post about it. For those of you who know me well, you know I'm a big supporter of women in the sciences and frankly the more the better. There's something about walking into an engineering building in any college in the world, that changes the enterer (is that word?) from whatever gender they are into an Engineer, and that's a lovely thing. So kudos out there Women of Science! and don't let the bastards grind you down!
Post-script: Just want to thank Shaenon Garrity, creator of Narbonic and Skin Horse (for getting me into mad science ladies), and Sydney Padua, creator of The Adventures of Babbage and Lovelace for teaching me about Ada Lovelace and opening the door to a real discussion of women in the sciences. Ms Padua is also an accomplished animator and general art bad ass, so check her out talking about graphic storytelling and just random Babbage anecdotes.
Check out more about Ada Lovelace day at Finding Ada.
I just read an article this morning in the Times, about a group of "Christian militia" folks in Michigan who were planning to kill a law enforcement officer and then bomb his funeral procession. They were caught prior to actually carrying out their plan, and have been charged with sedition and intent to use a weapon of mass destruction (is this really a legal term now?). Good guys win, bad guys in jail, right? Except these guys don't seem like run of the mill traitors. Beyond their intention to kill a law enforcement officer - who they view as a "foot soldier for the Federal government" - they wanted to bomb that officer's funeral procession. That sounds like an attempt to spread terror to me, beside the fact that it's a tactic that the IRA used to great effect in Northern Ireland in the 70's and 80's.
Then there's the manifesto on their website which reads like a paraphrasing of an AlQaeda recruiting pamphlet/video:
The Hutaree Web site features the motto “Preparing for the end time battles to keep the testimony of Jesus Christ alive” and a video showing rifle-toting men in camouflage running through woods and firing weapons.“Jesus wanted us to be ready to defend ourselves using the sword and stay alive using equipment,” the Web site says, adding, “The Hutaree will one day see its enemy and meet him on the battlefield if so God wills it.”
These folks differ from an AlQaeda sleeper cell in two ways: the details of their religious belief, and their ethnicity. Based on how Pakistani-American AlQaeda recruits in California, or upstate New York have been charged, I think the government needs to ask itself whether these two groups with similar aims and tactics can really be treated differently.
I'm concerned. Lately I have been listening to what I say and it seems like everything that comes out of my mouth is a bit derivative. That's to say it's a riff off something in the popular culture, or a trope from retro comedy shows. When I look around that's what pretty much everyone is doing as well. So it would seem that the more I rail against the lack of original material in "Hollywood", the less original material I myself create. Troubling. Then again there are all sorts of asides in Shakespeare that refer to the Bible and previous playwrights (some of whom were hacks on a par with the writers for your average contemporary sitcom), so maybe I am being unreasonable.
Yeah, I don't write. I know. Anyway, I'm here in San Diego "on business". My employers at LiteBrite Co have decided to send me to an industry conference/trade show and in my quest to make myself indispensable I said yes. So here I am at the convention center, which is quite familiar due to the times I have spent here at San Diego Comic-Con (yes, nerd, proud, let's move on). In a sense it's pretty much the same. Booths all over the place, nerds wandering the aisles, some dressed well, some dressed like Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons. The only thing that really stands out, or at least stands out most, is the large number of people who look like they don't belong here.
Before charges of elitism come flying this way (yes, elitist, unapologetic, let's move on), I am not simply judging a book by its cover. I am judging a number of books by their collective covers, statistically. By that I mean, that we all know that engineers have a tendency to be either slobs, or at the very least careless about their appearance. So a few unkempt fat guys wandering the aisles of a trade show is not a big surprise. What is a surprise is the guy in the wife-beater with the large facial tattoos who is there with his girlfriend (also sporting excessive body ink). That was second look worthy, but owing to my desire to not die by shanking at a technical conference it was not worth an iPhone pic.
So what is it about the youth of San Diego? Are they really that into fiber optics? Perhaps. My cynical nature, though, begs to know whether or not this is some sort of convention tourism. I mean, do people honestly just come to conventions of any type in hopes of picking up some plastic bags full of crappy swag? And why doesn't this happen in San Francisco? Mind you, it's miserable around here and we may or may not have the sheer volume of conventions that San Diego does; either that or our youths are less industrious. Either way, it's a weird thing to see a couple of thuggish kids in Michael Vick, football jerseys conversing with a thick-waisted mid-level marketing guy about optical components.
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.
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.
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.
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 ...
A few weeks ago, I got a call from my friend Sean ("The Midwife to the Pregnant Pause") with some surprising news. He and his wife were going to baptize their baby girl and wanted me to be the godfather. Well, suffice to say it was totally unexpected but never let it be said that I am one to let my friends down, and I said yes. The ceremony was surprisingly emotional, and the memory of my own Catholic school days resurfaced rather quickly. I wish I had it in me to go into details, but as I type I realize I am a little embarrassed by the emotions I had at the time and would rather keep them to myself. So there.
Now kiss the Don's ring.