Discouraged

Today, I met with a group of teachers that I'm taking on my summer road trip about Energy Issues along the Wasatch Front. (That was not the discouraging thing!) But while I was talking about my own biases, in the interests of full disclosure, I explained that as a scientist, I believe that data trump everything. And I believe this so strongly, it's such a deep part of my being, that I don't seem to be able to even imagine seeing the world any other way. So I had this in my head, and I was trying to imagine what it would be like to not believe in graphs.

And then, in the car, NPR had American Routes on, and sometimes I don't like to listen to that. So I flipped around the channels, and ran into KSL. Where some lunatic was talking about global warming and climate change, and how they don't exist. And he was saying that 15 years ago, everyone was predicting an ice age (which is false), and then he trotted out this thing that George Will said in his column, that there has been no warming in the last 12 years. But that's been shown to be false, and George Will just got his facts wrong, and the Washington Post just refused to correct it, even though they admitted it was incorrect. But here's this guy, carrying along this false idea because George Will said it. And the interviewer was just eagerly lapping it all up. Probably because the truth is so desperate?

And I was suddenly not only raging, but seriously discouraged. Because getting to work on this problem (and the related King Rat of all the other appalling problems facing us today) is so imperative, so crucial, and so obvious to me, that I can't even comprehend how someone could fail to see it, much less argue against it.

So I went and bought stuff to make home-brew beer and I came home. And I puttered around with my vegetable starts and checked on the asparagus bed. And I picked my dog's nose (poor Smokey and his pneumonia). And I turned on the radio, and it was the 'plague report' about the swine flu in Mexico. So I turned that off, and listened to DMB instead. But then it was the dodo song, and so I turned that off too. And I went out back and checked on my chickens. And then I came back in and I made a big chart on a big piece of newsprint of all the things I'm afraid of, and then I shredded it and put it in the chicken coop for them to shit on.

And now I feel better.

A little.

What I've been up to...

just to catch up, a little...

I've given a couple of talks---at USU, at ATK, and am getting ready to meet with the teachers for the summer class. This means I spend a lot of time on hold with the power company in Brigham City, among other things. ; )

I'm organizing lessons again. Which is not as much of a drag as it sounds, now that I've made everyone else responsible for themselves.

Our new pup has pneumonia. Poor little tyke. I got him an emergency roast beef sandwich today, because he was so pathetic. We've been working on him for the last ten days, and now have pulled out the big guns, antibiotically speaking. I just wish he would be able to breathe through his nose.

Trinkie and I are sneaking up on a reliable canter pirouette. If only all our tests consisted primarily of collected canter... we'd clean up.

We have a new fence to keep the dogs and the chickens separate.

We have newly re-upholstered chairs.

We have starts for the garden. Lots and lots of starts for the garden. Pretty soon, J's going to start complaining that I moved his cheese, and put baby tomatoes on it.

We have an asparagus bed! Now THAT is a commitment.

I have shredded years and years of old bills, bank statements, etc. We now have a filing system. With things in their files. With labels.

We have a new chicken coop. I cleaned out the old one. It wasn't nearly as disgusting as you think.

We have turned the compost heap, sorted out the brush pile and the woodpile and the compost pile.

We are about to have a new picnic table.

We have a long-term landscape plan, which includes tearing up the old driveway, and replacing it with plants. Nobody should have more driveway than house.

Phew.

Off to water the asparagus...

Smokey

Mom! Calm down. Lots of people have two dogs. Now we do, too. It's ok! Really.

This is Smokey. I was thinking of a puppy, since I have time at the moment. But then I saw this dog on the internet at the shelter in Park City. And he'd been at another shelter for two weeks. And black dogs, for whatever reason, are nearly unadoptable. And everyone wants a puppy. But maybe nobody wants this dog. Except maybe us. And then he leaned against my legs in that completely endearing way that Aussies do when they want you to take them home. So we did. He's got the twinkly toes. He's got the soulful eyes. He's almost got the eyebrows. He sleeps at my feet while I write in my blog. He's got the softest fur imaginable. And he and Captain think this is the best thing that ever happened to them.

Oh, and he needs to be taught to NOT chase the chickens. But he'll get that figured out. Soon.

Synchronicity

Yesterday, I went to give a talk at a nearby University. While I spent time thinking about it ahead of time, it took me all of an hour to prepare for this talk, and I wasn't nervous at all. In the middle of the talk, someone asked me about astroseismology and whether one of the oscillation modes could be responsible for the phenomenon I was trying to explain. Not that long ago, this would have made me nervous, and worked up. But I just said, 'I'm more or less completely ignorant about astroseismology, but I would guess that...' and it was fun to talk about. And fun to think about. And fun to argue about.

I was thinking about this afterwards, wondering what's different. Then, this morning, I was catching up with fellow bloggers, and find that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert, and yes, I probably have much more than that invested at this point, and so of course I feel like I can admit ignorance, defend my ideas, discuss new ideas thoughtfully and generally just have a good time giving talks. Even to physicists. Because, apparently, I'm an expert. Huh.