Sabbatical Grrrl

A new blog

2009-09-07T18:44:00.001-07:00

over at daysunmeasurable.blogspot.com

Because I'm not on sabbatical any more...

Science Safari, and the end of the blog.

2009-08-10T15:23:00.000-07:00

Back from the big teacher trip around Utah. 12 teachers participated, and we went to the Delta Coal-Fired Power plant, looked at oil and gas drilling sites, visited with bio-remediation specialists, talked to the Governor's Energy Advisor and a rep. from Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment. We built stuff and made stuff and learned stuff and looked at stuff and figured stuff out. Then I came home and slept for approximately 48 straight hours, with occasional breaks to eat or go ride my horse. These trips need two leaders. I've done the experiment now, and am certain of it.

My gut (!) tells me that it was a very successful trip. All the teachers were engaged, and active in the process, asking good questions and getting involved. I overheard several conversations about how they would use this information in their classrooms, and how cool their students would find it that they got to stick their heads (almost) inside the 3,000 degree boiler at Delta.

Today, I am delighted to find myself back at work with my friends---going to lunch, and catching up on all I've missed. It's good to be back. But it means the end of this blog! Maybe I'll start another one somewhere else. I'll let you know. Maybe it will be 'professor grrrl'. ; )

Science Unwrapped

2009-08-01T13:11:00.000-07:00

So, up in Logan, they are doing something pretty fun. Once per month, on the last Friday, they have a public lecture by a 'local' scientist, followed by an activity for the public. They call it Science Unwrapped.

I was invited to give a talk about 'The Lives of the Stars'... no, not THOSE stars. ; ) The kind that fuse hydrogen into helium. Shane and I put our heads together, and came up with what I thought was a really fun activity. We modified the stellar evolution flowchart to be a little simpler (leaving out some of the intricacies about which element gets fused when), and then turned it into a scavenger hunt! They could walk around the quad, and fill in the flowchart as they followed the branch points to figure out the answers. Shane put the whole thing 'to scale' in time, so that people could really get a sense that stuff happens at the beginning and the end, but in the middle, there's just not much going on for a REALLY long time. He made up some spiffy posters and handouts---apparently, his copy center charges much less than ours. At the middle of the main sequence part of the lifetime, there was lemonade and cookies, which fits in with the current age of the Sun, and the fact that now, for this tiny smitch of time, lemonade and cookies exist in the Universe.

Anyway. A rousing success.

Today, I'm getting final details taken care of for this teacher thing next week. Hooray for Kinko's!

Yellowstone

2009-07-28T18:33:00.000-07:00

I just spent the weekend in Yellowstone, where I gave two talks, and spent all day Saturday driving 'the loop', and stopping to see all the things. We saw a wolf! And so many bison. And a bunch of elk. And cranes and pelicans and too many wildflowers to count. We had a wonderful time. But here's what I learned about the talks...

First talk: science talk about the lives of stars. more or less a week of intro astronomy lecture compressed into an hour. I committed my usual nonsense, of making them 'Class, repeat after me.' and also participate in more meaningful ways, designed to help them remember that there are multiple ways for a star to die, and one of them is fast and 'loud' and one is slow and 'quiet', and a third is nothing really happening at all, just a fading away. This was very well received, and our friend Melanie, who has the ___fortune to be married to a dedicated amateur astronomer, claims she will even invite all her friends to come if I come back next year. Given that she is a potter, who has no interest whatsoever in astronomy, and hates to go to star parties, this seems like success. And that was all fine, and many people thought it was great. But I knew something different was coming. I could feel it percolating along under my conscious thoughts. Many people came back the second day, for:

Second talk: constellation stories. Ok. This is performance art, and not really science. I was really, really nervous about this. I've never done it without stars, so if it was cloudy, I didn't know what I was going to do. I've never done it in front of ~400 people, and I'd never done it in this type of venue, with mostly members of the general public, only a few of whom knew me and most of whom would be tired from a long day in the sun. But it went great. Better than great. It was inspired. I know, because I was there, being inspired by the venue, and the lighting, and the kids I kept dragging up on stage to help me act out the parts.

Before it was really dark, I started with a part about the tides, and had the kids up there 'dancing' the solar system, and figuring out why 'neap' comes from 'neafte' which is Saxon for scarcity. And some poor teenager was bored being the sun, and the moon and the earth had lots to do. Well, it's not always best to be the biggest and the brightest. Sometimes that means you have to just stand there and hold the solar system together.

Then I told the story of the Seven Wives Who Ate Onions. But I had no stars, because it was cloudy. I asked, and there were many fans of the Pleiades and the Hyades, but most people didn't know what I was talking about. So I brought three kids up, to be Orion, Taurus and the Pleiades, all in their line in the night sky. Orion struck his hunter pose, and Taurus used his fingers as horns, and the girl did her best to be multiple personality-ed. And so. It was hysterical, and everyone laughed and applauded and the kids were great, and then I told the story in my usual way, with all the waddling around hugely pregnant, and the men all confused, and all the drama of terrible winters waiting oh so impatiently for the miracle of a green shoot coming out of the ground. And there was lots of laughter and applause.

And then I told the story of Ursa Major, and the long tail on the bear (during which it occured to me to wonder if we ask the question wrong-way-round, and should be wondering why modern bears have short tails). And I wound up with two kids up there, one of whom was Callisto, and one was Zeus. In the middle, I just about panicked, because I realized that these two little kids were supposed to fall in love and have a child, but the boy saved it all, and was a trooper, and it worked out great. Because when I said that 'Zeus had a secret, he ALREADY HAD A WIFE!' the little kid said 'This is getting better for me all the time', which was a laugh line I couldn't have made up myself. And there was more laughter and nuttiness. And Zeus, despite the fact that he winds up looking like a nimrod, was really happy to play the part, and will probably talk about it all the rest of his days.

And then I closed with the Clash of the Titans, which is my favorite story to tell, but I added in this new thing, where half the audience was the sea monster, saying 'roar', and the other half was Andromeda, saying 'Help me, help me, help me' in this tiny little voice. And it was probably the best performance of this story in 1,000 years. Because you don't get a better setting than right in front of National Park Mountain, and you don't get a better audience than people on vacation, and you don't get better lighting than a campfire off to one side, and you don't get a better background set of noises than those made by elk settling down for the night next to the river. And it was magical and wonderful, and I was on fire, and I hope I get to do it again, because if there's one thing in life that I really love, it's telling stories that have been told for thousands and thousands of years; since even before we knew how to write them down. And it's better than television, and different than a play, because it's different when it's live, and when it's a single person's take on a single story and what it has to tell you about who we are. Every day, I'm a different person, and so I tell the story a different way, and it means something different to the people who take the time to listen. We make something brand new out of the past, and fold it into our common experience, and carry it, like a child, held inside us, close under our hearts.

Bummer.

2009-07-13T09:54:00.001-07:00

But not really. Er, only sort of.

So they were really pleased with the work I did. They called it 'creative' and 'clever' and 'well-written'. The editor said that the end-of-chapter pieces were particularly nice, and made him actually want to find out the answers.

However. The reason it took so long for them to get back to me is that they were unable to hammer out a compromise about the future of the book with the prior authors (not specifically related to me in any way, apparently). So the entire project is canceled. Which, if you think about it, means I dodged a bullet. They must be impossible to work with, if they couldn't even keep the project alive!

The editor is finding other work for me to do, because he wants me to keep some space in my schedule until their other astronomy textbook needs a new author (probably next year). Which is kudos for me.

So I'm bummed, but not as bummed as I could be... and at least it opens up the area in my head that I had been reserving for that project!

Still Waiting...

2009-07-05T19:52:00.001-07:00

to hear from New York. This is two weeks past THEIR deadline.

8P

But in the meantime, we have family in town, and that's keeping us pretty busy!

Deadline? What deadline?

2009-05-30T20:05:00.000-07:00

I eat deadlines for breakfast. and lunch. and dinner. and midnight snack. and the next day's breakfast...

I've been working more or less straight through since Wednesday to get this chapter finished up for the intro astronomy text. It took for flippin' ever (and much longer than expected) to straighten out all the details, like making sure the figure numbers were actually, you know, sequential. That's probably kind of important. And that the reference went to the correct figure. And so on.

But it's done. And I think it's really improved. Certainly, it's more fun and interesting. And the problems are much improved. I love writing problems. No, really. I do. I like to write problems that say 'Ok, now we've told you how it is. How would things be if it wasn't that way? What if I moved you over THERE? What if I change this one thing---how would the universe be different?' Maybe I read too much science fiction, but I just love figuring out how to get people to stretch beyond reality so they can look back and see how cool it is.

Keep your fingers crossed, because in spite of the stress of SO MANY details, I really had a blast working on it, and would like to get the contract.

Good Dogs!

2009-05-27T07:36:00.000-07:00

An update about doggie boot camp, now that Smokey is well, and can actually leave the property... Dinner last night and breakfast this morning were not delivered until they were polite. Such a shock! Their little faces when I kept putting their dinner back in the pantry as soon as they broke their 'wait' were hilarious. This is not the way they expect things to go...

This morning, I walked the two-headed monster down to the pond and back. By the end of the walk, I had TWO slack leashes, and could just look around at the birds and the sunshine. Our "meet and greets" need practice, though. Poor Smokey is just so interested in people! He breaks his "sit, wait" as soon as they speak to him. But, given that we are now convinced that he was only about 7 months old when we got him, I am pleased with his progress. He only jumps up in front of people about half the time now (and rarely actually on them).

They are back to only being allowed out in the backyard one at a time, unless I'm right there with nothing to do but pay attention to them! While on the one hand, their running around kills some energy, on the other hand, they just get more hyped up. Not to mention completely filthy. Good thing we have a porch we can close them into!

I'm pondering some agility training for both of them. They could use a job where they can learn to work together... at something besides stealing my sandwiches off of the counter!

Perfecting New Mexico Green Chile

2009-05-26T17:20:00.001-07:00

So here's what we've learned so far...

Anaheim peppers ARE the correct variety.
They grow just fine here in Utah, and they are always available at Carlos'.

Once you've got some in your hand, here's what you do:
Fire up the grill, as hot as you can make it.
Layer the chiles on the lowest rack.
Close the grill, and wait patiently.
Turn them when they start to blacken and blister.
Then turn them again.
Keep doing that, until they are totally black and blistered all over. It will look like you did it wrong, and you'll be nervous.

Dump the hot chiles into a heavy paper or plastic bag, and close it up tight.
Then leave them there. Once they are cool, you can put them in the fridge, but don't peel them yet.
Wait a couple of days. (This is very hard, because you want to eat them right away. But they need time for the roasted flavor to get into the 'meat' of the chile.)
Open 'em up and slip off the peel, which should just fall right off, practically.
Enjoy deeeeee-licious NMGC goodness, layered into everything humans can consume. Especially green chile-goat cheese-breakfast burritos. And cheeseburgers. And ham sandwiches. Who'm I kidding? I'd just about eat the plastic bag, and call it a sandwich!

Oh, BTW, don't let the dog get them off the counter while your back is turned. BAD DOG.

Sorry!

2009-05-20T10:00:00.000-07:00

Sorry, all, that I left you with that last, discouraged post! I'm feeling much more upbeat now, mostly because I've been busy playing outside in the bright Utah sunshine.

The new garden is in (almost 150 square feet!), the dog has recovered from his pneumonia, I've been building things, and making things, and learning things, and starting new projects (including, possibly, a new textbook project).

And our boy Barack has been busy making me proud. The new fuel efficiency standards are just a kick in the pants. And I can't believe he goes and watches his girls play soccer. The leader of the free world makes time for his children. It almost makes me want to have some. Almost. ; )

It probably helps that I've limited my NPR consumption in recent weeks. It's all very informative, but I'm feeling a little jaded about having too much information that you can't do anything about.

Discouraged

2009-04-25T14:10:00.001-07:00

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...

2009-04-20T18:32:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-08T09:24:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-08T09:14:00.000-07:00

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.

Subtle changes

2009-03-31T19:31:00.001-07:00

Before I went to Socorro, I'd developed a bit of a wind phobia. Sometimes the wind here, near the mouth of Strong's Canyon, is pretty extreme. It has been known to blow the Adirondack chairs right off the deck.

But Socorro might also be called Sirocco, because it's really windy all the time there. So much so that people build adobe walls around their houses to keep their stuff from blowing away.

After about three months of cowering at night in my A-frame, I started to get annoyed. The fine desert grit blew right under the door and through the window frames. It got in my food, it got on my toothbrush. It coated the floor and the bathtub and made mud when I showered. Then, after about another month, I stopped noticing it all together.

We've got a bit of wind here at home tonight, the kind that used to make me cower under the covers.

It sounds like the sea.

Random Findings...

2009-03-30T09:05:00.000-07:00

On Friday, I was cleaning out the furnace room. We store our outdoor gear in there---snowshoes and skis and tents and sleeping bags and, well you get the idea. It occurred to me that some shelves would be helpful. So I was putting them in.

I bumped a shelf into the duct work, and a little metal rectangle, a bit larger than an index card, fell down onto the floor with a loud clatter. I gasped because I thought I'd poked a hole in the duct, and stood on tiptoe to look at the duct work. And I saw this piece of brown paper. Which, naturally, I pulled on. It was a paper bag. Whatever was inside was heavy. As I pulled it toward the edge of the duct, a perfectly ordinary quarter fell on the floor. My brows furrowed and my heart thumped. I pulled the bag out, and held it in my hand for a long moment. A moment fraught with this much sheer, unexpected possibility had to be shared with someone else. So I brought the bag inside and put it on the kitchen table. Then I went out and did a bunch of other things while I waited for J. It was 3:50, and he was supposed to be home at 4. I kept wandering through the kitchen to stare at the bag until 4:40, when he FINALLY came home. At that point, I was coming in from the chicken coop with four eggs in my hand.

I said, "Come on! I've got something to show you! I didn't open it yet, because I wanted you to be here! Four eggs! Look!" which, naturally, made no sense at all to him.

As I was putting the eggs in the fridge, J casually opened the bag. I was telling him all about it, but I don't think he heard me, because I had to tell it again later. Inside the bag? More than $1000 worth of silver coins (according to wikipedia).

I told the story again, dragging J out to the furnace room, where he looked all over for other hidden treasure.

Naturally, the response has been mixed---from disbelief to amazement to envy. But the most interesting one is the response from a friend of a friend, who warned us that we shouldn't talk about it. We should keep it quiet. We shouldn't mention it out loud. Because the old owners might come and want the money back. Or get a court order to tear the house apart looking for more. I think less than charitable things about his view of the world.

Which brings me to another random finding, this one inside my own head. Apparently, I have a sincere faith in the Universe's own peculiar brand of justice. If anyone showed up with a court order to tear my house apart over $1000 in coins, I wouldn't even have to do anything. Likely, the big pine tree in the front yard would fall on their heads, and drive them like a nail down into the sewer line. So I'm just not worried about this. Instead, I'm just childishly excited by the buried treasure that I found, and I'm having fun making up stories of how the money got there. All the sudden, I'm living in Nancy Drew's or Trixie Belden's universe. How fun is that?

Is this when to say 'when'?

2009-03-23T18:42:00.000-07:00

I find myself in a spot that's unusual for me. I'm uncertain. And because I note that it's unusual, you know I usually just plow ahead, without worrying too much about the consequences. But, at the moment, I find that I'm dragging my feet on a project that I wouldn't usually drag myself to. Instead of getting to work on it, I find myself vacuuming. (!) Washing dishes. Doing laundry. All things that are necessary, and so I can convince myself that they need doing RIGHT NOW.

So here's the thing. I'm looking at this grant proposal, which, if we got it, would be huge. Enormous. Challenging and of national impact. I would more or less devote myself to this effort for the next four years. Everything else would take a backseat, because running this effort would be a full time job, in addition to the half time teaching load that is more or less necessary to keep my actual job. Not to mention committee work. And research with students. Ah. And so there I see the problem, even as I start talking it out, I see what's bothering me. More than 150% time for the next four+ years. Given that 100% time at my job typically means many more than 40 hours per week, 150+% time typically means... well, no time for anything else. Not only that, but I'd be working 150+% time for 130% pay.

Having just done pretty much that for two years, I can tell you that I always felt like I wasn't giving adequate attention to ANYthing I was doing. I always felt a little bit behind. Always not quite ready for class. Always not quite having the homework done before I assigned it. Always having emails piling up, reports slapped together, some purchase or requisition not quite properly tracked or accounted for. Always leaving my tack uncleaned, my clothes unwashed, the dog unwalked, and the bed unmade. Is it too much to ask to have time every day to pull the comforter up? Some days, I didn't have time to take a shower.

And then today, on Radio West, comes this guy: Tom Hodkinson, who wrote 'How to be Idle', and he talked about the Western obsession with work. And he said, 'What if you woke up every morning and thought, 'What shall I do today?'' And I was struck by that. Because here I am on sabbatical, having done some really pretty important work for the last five months. By all rights, I should spend the next five weeks trying to figure out what I would do if I didn't HAVE to do anything. Instead, I'm beating myself up over not really feeling all that gung-ho about taking on a future four years that are going to put me in the same position that made me need the sabbatical so desperately in the first place.

But then, I think about what it would mean to the University and the Department to have this grant come in. It's not everyone here that knows how to do this kind of thing. And I can see it all laid out in steps ahead of me. First, we'd do this, and then we'd do that, and then we'd do this, and then we'd have a finished product that was better than anything that currently exists, and it would really be a big help to teachers everywhere. And I have a big enough ego that I think that maybe we are the only ones who COULD do it. And I have a small enough ego to think that this kind of grant-getting is the most useful thing that I contribute. And I think about what would it mean to have this kind of influx of cash in the current economic climate.

But then I heard this story about someone who got facilities from the University---new space for new offices. But no furniture. Seriously. Not a chair. Not a pencil. Not a stapler. Nothing. And I've been promised that 'we could find the space'. But I never asked about furniture. Because why would I, right? What good are offices without desks? Grant agencies don't pay for furniture. That's supposed to come out of the overhead. That's obvious, right? But in the last grant, I was scavenging furniture from surplus. Do I really want to go through all that sort of thing again?

And maybe I should just worry about keeping the job I already have. I mean, I really, really love my job. Would I love doing this other job as much? Would it be as valuable as being in the classroom? Would I ever find time to walk the dog or ride my pony?

So mostly, I'm just wondering if I've gone completely mad... I guess I feel that applying for the grant means stepping off into a whole other career, in addition (not instead of) the one I already have, and I'm not sure I want to go there. On the other hand, we probably wouldn't get it (those are the odds). But on the other, other hand, if we did, it really would mean a commitment of cosmic proportions, for at least four years. And if I'm not sure I want to make that commitment, should I waste everyone's time by applying?

And isn't this, maybe, one of the whole points of a sabbatical, to step back and try to get some perspective on what you do every day, and what it's good for, and what it's about, and why you do it, and how you could do it better, more authentically? And to try to figure out, maybe just a little, when it's time to say 'when'?

Or maybe I'm just thinking too hard.

Small things #15:

2009-03-22T17:31:00.000-07:00

1) Rolling over in the night and finding J there.

2) Captain, wanting morning pets. And then hopping down to let us sleep in until 8.

3) Being reunited with friends on our deck for a random Friday celebration, and laughing so hard our stomachs hurt. I am so blessed in my friends.

4) Hours-long phone calls to my mom, which likewise make my stomach hurt from laughter.

5) I began drafting the landscape plot of our property today. And I remembered the 'two-arc' method of drawing an irregular quadrilateral, (using only side lengths and diagonals!), from high school geometry. Did I EVER think I'd need to know that? No. It is such a sweet surprise to have a problem and then find in your mind all the pieces that build a solution.

Small things #14:

2009-03-19T17:38:00.000-07:00

1) The way my pony calls for me as soon as she hears my voice. I have a special nicker all my own, different from the 'treats' nicker. What an enormous privilege that is.

2) Sore muscles. From having fun outside, not from being locked in the gym.

3) USU Extension, which is teaching me landscape design, for only $100!

4) Toy time with Captain. He's so painfully cute about this.

5) A cleanly swept porch.

Home

2009-03-19T09:08:00.000-07:00

I've been home for a week now, and things are finally starting to settle down a little, so that I have time to check in here. Between going to get the ponies, and getting them settled in, and re-learning how to sit on my re-trained pony, and touching all my stuff, and checking in at work, and calling all the people who need to come and do things, and talking to my mom on the phone for THREE HOURS, and having sore muscles, and losing and finding all the bits of paper that document all my activities, and actually cooking food, and actually going out to not-Mexican restaurants, and taking the dog for walkies, and training him not to pull on the leash or chase chickens, ponies or children, and getting bikes tuned and assembled, and dropping off and picking up dry cleaning, and doing laundry (in the house!), and cleaning floors and washing dishes, and planting seeds, and learning how to live with someone else again, and getting new glasses, and signing up for landscape design classes, and cleaning up after the annual disaster known as winter, all I can say is...

I'm so happy to be home. But I'm not sure how I'll ever have time for a job. How did I ever fit it in?

Small things #13:

2009-03-05T12:16:00.000-08:00

1) J is coming to get me. Not small, really. Not at all.

2) Seinfeld, which boosted me back up after Religulous dumped me in the doldrums.

3) books on my iPhone. Coraline was great, I look forward to the movie, and Pride and Prejudice is an old standby that I'm visiting again.

4) Stuffed sopaipillas at DJ's. I'm going to miss 'em. I'm going to miss 'em so much I might have mentioned it before...

5) Walter. Who went all the way to Belen at midnight to pick up Adam, when his car broke down. Hooray Walter!

Something fast to say...

2009-03-04T10:33:00.001-08:00

Much more deliberate thinking about the Republicans and their obstructiveness and despair-mongering has brought me to this thought:

It's not enough to have an opinion. You need to have an idea.

And so I'm now busily exploring my own mind, turning up rocks, looking under logs, pushing aside fronds, staring up into branches, to see how often I have only an opinion, not an idea.

This is the same, I suppose, as saying 'Everyone's a critic', except that's not an idea. It's just an opinion.

Small things #12:

2009-03-04T08:59:00.000-08:00

1) ...when a plan comes together...

2) Jigsaw puzzles

3) Finding money you forgot you had, stuffed in a pocket.

4) Stephen Briggs reading Terry Pratchett in audiobook. My life is more fun because of it. (How DID I ever get along before the iPod and the audiobook?)

5) gmail.

Report on the 'Minimalism Project'

2009-03-03T15:32:00.001-08:00

A friend just called my Socorro life 'an experiment in minimalism'. I hadn't quite thought of it that way, but I suppose that it was, relatively. I can report that some things I really missed. But mostly, I got along fine. Here's the setup:

1) ~600 sq. ft. cottage, of which only 400 sq. ft actually got used. (I stacked my clothes in plastic bins in a corner of one room, but didn't actually use that room. I just never got around to getting a dresser for the bedroom...)
2) Minimal furniture purchasing:
one sm. computer desk that I used for both desk and kitchen table.
one metal folding chair.
one air mattress with one set of sheets, one blanket, one pillow.
3) Other furniture rented, by the month:
one sofa
one loveseat
one area rug
one coffee table
two endtables
two lamps
4) All kitchen supplies fit in a single box---one of those red-lidded bins from Lowe's.
5) One duffle bag full of clothes.
6) One other red-lidded bin full of random things (a few books, watercolor paints, yarn and knitting needles, bathmat, soap dish, etc.)
7) One laptop.
8) One iPhone. (see why I don't consider it 'minimalism'?)
9) No landline.
10) No tv.
11) No internet connection.
12) No car. (see why my friend DOES consider it 'minimalism'?)
13) For about 6 weeks, I had a vacuum cleaner. But it broke, and I just borrowed one from a friend twice since then.
14) In the kitchen: electric stove and range, fridge, sink. No microwave, no small appliances. Horror has been expressed about my not having a coffee-maker.
15) In the bathroom: shower, a tub I'd never bathe in, toilet, sink. No hairdryer, etc. But I never have those. Again, some react with horror.
16) One five-gallon aquarium, with five fish.
17) One window box with three plants.
18) One sweet bicycle.
19) No washer/dryer. Laundromat 1 mile away.
20) One large backpack.
21) One small backpack
22) One cloth shopping bag.

For the record, I did not feel at all deprived. I felt like I was living pretty swank, actually. I ate out as much as I wanted, visited the library a couple of times per week, went to the grocery store nearly every day, paid for my share of food and beer with friends at BBQ's, and spent more evenings out than in. J came to visit, and seemed to feel that some added swankness was needed, and by the time he left, I'd acquired all kinds of things, like a bath mat and a soap dish and a toilet paper holder. And a whole slew of glasses for wine or martinis. I had a bottle of 18-year Jameson's that I bought specially because I had intended it as my 'tenure whiskey'. It turned into my 'Obama inauguration whiskey', and everyone enjoyed it very much, which was more fun than drinking it all myself. I often had wine in the house, and often took a bottle elsewhere.

For almost the entire time I was here (exclusive of J's visit), I kept track of every single expense. If I spent money, I recorded it in my phone. I wanted to know what this boondoggle was costing.

Monthly costs:
rent: $375
furniture: $130
electric: usually $15, $50 Dec and Jan (electric baseboard heat, oh boy.)
water, etc.: $11 avg.
food, wine and beer: $80
eating out: $60
entertainment: (iTunes, movie rentals, audiobooks, etc.): $30
liquor (not wine and beer): $20 ($90 of this total was my 18-yr Jamesons)
miscellaneous: (laundry, fish food, train fare, magazines, etc.): $15

So. Add it up. For less than $800/month, I was living really comfortably.

What did I miss? John. Captain. Trinket. The gurls. My friends at home. Trees. My garden. Good pots and pans. A knife with room for your fingers under the handle. A 'real' NPR station. Restaurant variety. Windows that close all the way. An outdoor space to inhabit.

Towards the end, I got tired of schlepping my clothes to the laundromat. Mostly because I had left my big backpack at home in January, and had to take two trips every time. Bad enough to walk two miles to do your laundry. Worse to do it twice in one day. If I were staying longer, I would either a) send for the larger backpack, or b) start calling the public transportation van, or c) start borrowing an NRAO van.

Sometimes I got really frustrated by not having the interweb right there at home when I wanted it. But then I'd walk over to someplace that had it, and figure ok, whatev. After a while, I just got used to planning ahead. And then I got used to only being able to check email on my phone. And then I noticed I was a lot more relaxed...

I didn't miss having a car. I listened to a lot of audiobooks, and got a lot of thinking done. After a while, I even stopped using my bike, prefering to take my time and walk wherever I was going, because there was enough time to have a complete thought, but not so much that I bored myself. Once in a while, I felt a little claustrophobic. So I'd take the public transportation van (not a bus. It's complicated.) to the train station, or I'd talk people into a big group hike.

Now, I grant you. I don't live like this at home. Home is lots more luxurious, and has lots more dependents. It's also much colder than here. And anyone can put up with almost anything for five months. That's not the point. The point is... well, I don't know what the point is. I guess the point is that if I had to, I could get by with a lot less. And still be totally good. And that's really comforting, at this particular moment of chaos.

Small things #11:

2009-03-03T11:00:00.000-08:00

1) Unstructured time. The picture above is the first one that comes up on a google image search for 'unstructured time'. Why should spending time always need to be 'profitable'?

2) My air mattress, which did not spring a leak until this weekend. If I fill it before I go to bed, I only have to fill it once in the middle of the night!

3) Thai food. Especially panang red curry with tofu.

4) Recognizing that what you have in your hand might be more valuable to someone else. I got a massage yesterday. The m.t. was telling me how she always wanted to be a marine biologist when she was a kid. But then she had to grow up and let go of her dream. She's always regretted it. I happened to have both a box of notecards AND Earthwatch's 2009 magazine of science volunteer/vacation opportunities in my bag. (What are the chances?!) So I wrote her a note, and left her the magazine. I also tipped her 50%, to get her started. I like to imagine her running with that.

5) Time passing. I also picked up a book about bridge yesterday, published in 1976 by, gasp!, a woman. The introduction is all about how you shouldn't assume that a woman doesn't have the endurance (!) or the intelligence (!) to play bridge, because Dorothy Truscott breaks all the barriers. I am so, so lucky that I didn't even know that there was a bridge barrier for women. You've come a long way, baby.

Small Things #12:

2009-02-27T08:03:00.000-08:00

1) Being able to rant on your blog. And then sleep. Better out than in, dads always say. Although not about ranting, really. My apologies for the swearing. But if I kept it in my head, I would have been up all night arguing with people who weren't there.

2) The burrito lady, who has disappeared because the construction people are here, and/or somehow Chartwell's has chased her off. But she introduced me to the best bfb's anywhere. I talked about them for TEN years before I came back to Socorro. And now I know how to make them. Thank you burrito lady! I hope you come back soon.

3) The Navajo store. Which is out of dried berries. Because they won't have any more until more berries have grown and matured and been picked and dried. There's something bizarrely satisfying about being disappointed in my dried berry supply.

4) Friends who take my remarks and turn them into poetry.

5) Bridge. I won an actual hand. ON PURPOSE. I made the contract, on purpose, and understood all the bidding, and argued with my partner to be the one to play it, and then I played it, and made the contract +3 tricks! Wow. I'm so impressed with myself.

Oh. THIS is what hatred feels like.

2009-02-26T14:46:00.001-08:00

Bastards. F*@#*$ing Republican bastard sh@#@#theads full of sh#$#$t.

Check this article from the Guardian.

Lemme just pull a few tidbits for you (emphasis added):

"The warnings were the first time Congress had been directly confronted with the growing evidence that the impact of climate change will be far more severe than revealed even in the UN's most recent report, in 2007.

The hearing was also the first time senators had been permitted to hear testimony about the dangers to human health from climate change. In 2007, the Bush administration censored testimony from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on the rise in asthma and other respiratory illnesses, as well as the increasing occurrence of "tropical" parasites."

Ok. So our government has been kept in ignorant darkness by Bush. We knew that already. (Never mind that I feel physically ill (!) at the thought of anyone censoring the CDC, ever, for any reason. Perhaps I'm irrational in my profound respect for the mission of this agency.) But the light of knowledge should be a beacon, right? But then my head exploded:

"Republicans argued that Barack Obama's proposed carbon cap legislation would be costly. "I will certainly oppose raising energy costs on suffering families and workers during an economic crisis when the science says our actions [to combat climate change] will be futile," said Kit Bond, a Republican senator from Missouri." (emphasis added)

f#$*@#%$*ing sh#$#$thead Republicans. Denial to despair in a single month. Exactly how much do they think widespread drought, death and destruction will cost? Hundreds of millions, even billions of people displaced? How can you put a price tag on 'uninhabitable cities'? Do they not know about the dust bowl? Are they really that ignorant? I hate them so much, the quitters. Losers. Whiners. Quitters, quitters, quitters. Who do they think they are? Do they even have a single ethical bone amongst them? Do they have any sense of how to TRY? At all? They should all be locked in a closet so I won't keep having these fearfully satisfying visions about driving an icepick into Boehner's eye. They should all be locked in a closet so they can't hurt us anymore. I howl inarticulately at them. Bastards. I hate them, I hate them, I hate them. Do they have no sense of responsibility at all? How can I ever forgive them for this? How will all the little kids I know ever forgive US for this? WE CAN NOT AFFORD DESPAIR. Republicans, we have no time for you to come to grips with the facts. Catch up on your own. We're not going back for you. We have no time for your despair or your willful ignorance. Get over it or get the hell out.

This may be the first time in history that the dominant party is still in opposition. I hate Republicans more than ever before. I'm even angrier than before. I want to fight them even harder than before. Even though they are rapidly becoming so pathetic that you almost feel sorry for them. (Palin? Jindal? Is that the best they've got? Really?)

Get 'em out. Get 'em all out. They lie. They steal. They cheat. They have no credibility. They have no morals. They have no ideas. They are standing in the way, and they can ALL go. We have work to do.

I've had it. I'm going out to hug a tree.

Small Things #11:

2009-02-26T07:22:00.000-08:00

1) John Cusack. Igor was funny. But I especially love High Fidelity. Which brings me to

2) Nick Hornby.

3) This word: soupçon, which I recently heard used in actual conversation for the very first time.

4) The vast internet, which gave me a way to type the cedilla (and reminded me what it was called).

5) My kindergarten teacher, who taught me to draw a five by putting on the coat, and then the boots and then the hat. I think of it now, because the cedilla looks like shooz for the 'c'.

Small things #10:

2009-02-25T09:07:00.000-08:00

1-5) Watching students go on to graduate school, and totally kick butt. Ok. That's not so small. But it deserves Ben and Jerry's, I think. I raise a spoon in honor of Ang. Nice work.

Small things #9:

2009-02-25T08:26:00.000-08:00

1) Closed office doors. On a day when it's 70+ and sunny. Fun is happening.

2) Stretching.

3) My cast iron pan. Which makes the best french fries on the planet.

4) Listening to Obama, eating popcorn, and texting exclamation points back and forth to J.

5) Socorro Transportation, which is going to take me to the train on Monday, so that I can spend the day in Albuquerque. And they'll only charge me $1 each way! Of course, I have to leave at 5:30 am, but that's ok. ;)

Small things #8:

2009-02-24T08:55:00.001-08:00

1) Seeds are arriving at my house. They'll be there when I get back.

2) I had a whole discussion last night about whether or not it was possible to combine a cat and an oven, and make a tumble-dryer for clothes. Net result? Yes, if you didn't care that your clothes were in tiny shreds afterwards. Oh and covered in cat hair. The jury is still out on whether a dryer sheet would fix this problem.

3) Bagels.

4) Asparagus. Now in season around here. And on a related note: The Michigan Asparagus Advisory Board. Oh, and the award-winning Asparagus, The Movie. Who knew?! I need that word again. Wow! People! Wow! I'm crying from laughing over here.

5) The Office.

Ok. Nobody move. I mean it.

2009-02-23T13:57:00.001-08:00

This has been a winter of one thing after another, after another, after another. Death and disease in my little circle of friends, and wider collapses of various kinds. Drought and fire and floods and more death and disease. Economic disaster and war and starvation and governments falling in Europe. It's a little overwhelming.

And I find myself with this odd, visceral reaction of wanting everyone to just sit very still. I seem to have an almost superstitious, almost un-articulated, almost belief that if everyone just sits very quietly with their head down, then nothing else bad can happen.

Come to think of it, that makes perfect sense, if it was wolves who were going to eat us. Too bad. I know what to do about wolves. Whack them on their noses with a stick, and then climb a tree. Maybe I'll just go climb a tree. Maybe that will help.

Things I learned from Larry...

2009-02-23T12:07:00.000-08:00

1) Take everyone at their own value. Larry Miller was one of the good guys. I met him when I served on the Board of Directors of the Clark Planetarium. He was the Chairman of the Board, and I was the token scientist. (And also the token woman, in a Board of 16. Oh, and token educator, as well. I wore a lot of hats there.) But while the Board was constructed in this way, I never once felt it from him. From the very first meeting, his leadership style was distinguished by an appreciation for what each individual had to bring to the Board. Occasionally, there would be discussions about absent board members, discussing whether they should continue on the Board, because their ability to bring money to the planetarium was inadequate. But Larry never applied this metric to me, instead recognizing that my 'in-kind' contributions were as valuable as any from the business or financial community.

2) Money is just numbers on paper. I'll never forget the day I heard him say this. It was a revelation to me, and caused such a deep and abiding change in my attitude towards money that it was a dividing point in my life. There was 'before' I had this idea, and 'after' I had this idea. It's one thing to hear me (a middle-class professor of physics) say this. It's another thing entirely to hear it from a self-made multi-millionaire, with hundreds of millions of dollars in assets. This was later re-inforced by reading Making Money by Terry Pratchett---'the dream of money'. But it was Larry who helped me get over a lifelong neurosis about earning and spending and debt. Just in time for this recession. For which J thanks him endlessly, no doubt.

3) If you get 'em in the door, the money will follow. He said this all the time, over and over. Probably because it was so different than the way the Director thought about things. He meant that if you got people to come to the IMAX (a low-profit-margin item), they would also go to the snack bar and the store (high-profit-margin items), but they wouldn't come for the popcorn. So don't try to sell them popcorn. Sell them IMAX tickets, and make it easy for them to buy popcorn. Now, this might not seem to apply to my life as a physics professor. But it does. Sell them astronomy, and make it easy for them to buy math.

4) First rule of business: Make it easy for them to give you money. Yes. This has made our little planetarium the success that it is. It's not something that occurs to you at first, when you are spending all your time worrying about the product. But you have to spend as much time worrying about the delivery. Really. You do.

5) A good marketing campaign will cost you $1/head. So you'd better plan for bigger profit margins than that. This is all of a piece with learning about a hundred business principles, which he taught me in this specific context, but which mostly taught me to think about businesses as an objective series of decisions to make. Business is a game. It has rules, but even more than that, it has probabilities. The key to being successful in business is balancing your probabilities. It's like poker that way.

6) Sometimes a single phrase, from the right person, at the right time, can change a person's life.

7) Cry when you are moved to do so, and don't worry about who sees it. Even if you are a man.

8) It's really, really fun to write a check for $250,000 to support work you believe in.

9) Each of us has a responsibility to others. Everyone has something to give. And finding out what that is, and how to give it, is the best work of your life.

Rest in peace, Larry. I hope the heaven you believe in is waiting for you.

Small things #7:

2009-02-23T11:55:00.000-08:00

1) Sushi with A&K(&A&G), even when I'm not there... ; )

2) Chimineas.

3) The iTunes store.

4) Lucinda Williams.

5) Really nice notebooks with creamy paper and smooth writing pens.

What is the word?

2009-02-20T13:27:00.000-08:00

One of the tragedies of modern times is that so many words have fallen out of use. That weakens our ability to think and communicate in detail. My favorite example is 'melancholy', which describes a very specific, non-clinical emotional state. When I am melancholy, no other word will do. But the word is rarely used these days. I'm always on the lookout for feelings or experiences for which I have no word. And then I either make one up, or spend a lot of time looking for the word. And then I try to get other people to use it too. But just now, I'm stumped.

I'm learning to play bridge, and am filled with a sort of awe-struck, joyful laughter at how complicated it is. I can't help but shake my head at people, but not in a mad way, or as though I don't understand, just sort of an incredulous but admiring and good-natured 'Wow! People! Wow!' kind of way. (See how I don't have a word for this!?)

Let me explain a little. To play bridge, you confine yourself to fifteen words (one thru seven, the four suits, and a few extra), and then try to communicate the precise state of your 13 cards to someone else using only those fifteen words. There are entire systems of communication, and you are only allowed to do very specific things in those systems. And people take this VERY SERIOUSLY.

As a physicist, I might say, pompously, 'Well, yes, complication, of course.' But this is not the complication of nature, which is necessarily complicated, and can only be simplified so far before your idea doesn't represent the reality anymore. Bridge is an artificial complication---a system of rules that take years to learn, and decades to master. And it serves no practical purpose! How complicated are the rules? I have just received a summary of the American system. It runs 42 pages.

Wow! People! Wow! I wonder what the word is for this feeling?

PC or not PC?

2009-02-18T14:40:00.000-08:00

I have the pleasure of teaching Honors 1500 in the fall. This is 'Perspectives in Physical Science', which means it can be pretty much anything I want. The last time I taught it, I did cosmology. Sure, I could do that again, but why? Just 'cause it's easier? I SCOFF at the notion.

My first thought was to do the environmental physics class I've been working on, with a slightly more policy-oriented focus, but I think that will just mess up my head for the later course. Besides. This is a chance to bust out and take a risk and do whatever. So then I had this idea: Physics @ Home. Not standard physics experiments in your house, but the physics OF your house. Physics of cooking, physics of cleaning, physics of heating, cooling, electricity, etc.

So, I can't be the only one who's ever had this idea, right? So I went looking to see what's out there in the world of books. Amazon turns up several, the most recent published in 1946. There IS a Science of Cooking book---I have this in my library at home, and have enjoyed it immensely. But nothing about the other topics at this level (although I've pinged my most edu-alert colleague to see what he knows). There's a Physics of Everyday Phenomena, but this is not quite the topical thing that I'm seeking---too many airplanes, not enough vacuum cleaners.

Please note that even GOOGLE (!) turns up zippo on the subject. GOOGLE! Crazy talk. I did a couple of specific searches, some of which turned up valuable info. Most of them did not. There's a physics of the microwave oven, for example. Which seems to mostly consist of lighting things on fire or exploding them. Very little on standing waves...

So this has got me wondering. Is this an idea whose time has come around again? Was the whole idea dropped because no one thought it was interesting? Because physicists traditionally have stay-at-home spouses? Because we've thoroughly divorced our lives from our work, and never the twain shall meet? Or because it seems too girly? Because we stopped teaching home-ec?

But what about the stay-at-home dad? Surely he wants to know why only egg whites beat up into that incredible froth? And why it falls if there's even a teeny bit of yolk? And why is a copper pan better anyway? Right? Or why is it so flippin' hard to get beef juice out of a pan, but not burned on veggies? Or how does low-e glass work? Right? Or why water makes that cool shape coming out of the faucet, almost always with a twist in it---where does the twist come from? And why is the sprayer attachment so much better at getting gunk off the sink? And what's the deal with teflon anyway? And why does the smoke go up the chimney instead of into the house? And why does soap work? And what does a GFCI do, and why do I need one in the bathroom? And why are CFLs loaded with mercury, and how do they actually save energy? And how does the water get up the corn stalk in the garden anyhow? And when I siphon out my fish tank, how does that work? And what's up with water levels?

Oh! Or the physics of beer, hello! I KNOW some people are interested in this topic!

Doesn't everyone want to know these things? I mean, Alton Brown! Right? That's a whole show devoted to this science in the kitchen.

And then I was wondering why we are surprised that there aren't more women in physics. Nobody talks about the physics of your oven. What's up with that? I don't mean to say that it's all women would be interested in, although I realize it sounds that way! But ovens are something everyone should be interested in. Right? Absolute, supreme utility---the oven. I've read studies that show that women are interested in biology because they see the utility. Conversely, they lose interest in physics because they perceive it to be non-utilitarian. Not helpful. Not useful. But all the chicks I know (and lots of men) love Alton Brown. And that makes me wonder.

Oh. I am so excited to go back to the classroom, where anything can happen...

Small things #6:

2009-02-18T13:04:00.001-08:00

1) Circus Ponies! No, not the fuzzy ones. The software ones.

2) Killing two reports with one stone.

3) Reports. Oh. I get it. They are for ME.

4) Absolutely dreadful talks are good for daydreaming. A little slice of time when you don't get what you want, and can't be distracted by YouTube.

5) Bingham's Cyclery.

Small things #5:

2009-02-17T12:26:00.000-08:00

1) Hiking with friends. Even when they get all manly-man-man and annoying.

2) Emergency snacks.

3) E & M, who gave a new home to Huey, Dewey, Louie, Bill and Ted, and are so excited about it. I will always remember M's face when I set up the aquarium on her counter. She couldn't take her eyes off them.

4) The Seed Savers Exchange---the world's most beautiful catalog.

5) Facebook Scrabble. Which is to real Scrabble as American Guinness is to real Irish Guinness. It is wonderful because it's a pale, ghostly, but accessible reminder of how wonderful the real thing is.

Small Things #4:

2009-02-13T11:09:00.000-08:00

Can't be helped. We need another post today.

1) Colin's pictures. This is my favorite. Calcite with the new SEM. It's breath-taking. My colleagues stagger me routinely. And these are just the warm-up pictures. Wow. Colin. Wow. Admiration from afar.

2) ULIRG talk. With pictures. Of the most distant quasars.

3) Today, my friends showed me pictures covering orders of magnitude from ~10^-6 to ~10^29. How do we even hold it in our heads? I'm dizzy.

4) Colloquium today (the ULIRGS) was simultaneously viewed by people in Socorro, Albuquerque and Santiago. Yes. That's Chile. On the other side of the planet (depending on how you draw your sides).

5) And yet, I still get to eat lunch.

Small Things #3:

2009-02-13T09:20:00.002-08:00

1) Alternate definitions of 'winning'.

2) Wind that blows so hard it BREAKS THE DOOR. WOW! WOW. Seriously. Wow. I thought we were having a tornado. Turns out I just have wimpy, mostly-already-broken doors. Still. Wow.

3) My morning encounter with Jehovah's Witnesses. They are so cute and roly-poly and earnest. Especially when they show me astronomy pictures on their pamphlets. I sincerely love people. Everyone picks their own favorites from the thousand words a picture represents. Such glorious diversity. So many ways to think.

4) 4.5 billion more years of sunshine. Wealth beyond imagining.

5) University mail rooms---so much more convenient than the post office. They saved me about 3 miles of walking with a heavy package today.

Unexpected surf result

2009-02-12T14:54:00.000-08:00

Got me to this article from Michael Pollan:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/magazine/20wwln-lede-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2

which I document here for purposes of the Environmental Physics class. At some point, a student is going to ask me if there is any hope at all. Maybe not. It's all going wahooney-shaped way faster than anyone predicted. But that's no reason to sit around on your ass and do nothing.

To use a religious metaphor, that compresses this long secular humanist argument into words of (almost) one syllable, 'To despair is to turn your back on God.'

So there.

Small things #2:

2009-02-12T10:16:00.001-08:00

1) Libraries. Not our sole redeeming idea, arguably not our best redeeming idea, but redemption, nonetheless.

2) Anne of Green Gables. I never get tired of this story, and the eye-candy that CBC made of it.

3) Darwin and Lincoln, born on the EXACT SAME DAY. A good day for the species.

4) My iPhone, which lets me listen to NPR from all over the country, without an internet connection, even when it's windy and local NPR is down. (NPR deserves it's own post.)

5) A second cup of tea at breakfast.

Small things #1

2009-02-11T10:18:00.000-08:00

1) It snowed yesterday, and it's 56 today.

2) Today is pizza lunch, and I get to look at pretty Spitzer pictures.

3) The loading dock guy is so nice and helpful. I will bring him a chocolate bar, in trade for the boxes he is saving for me.

4) Puppies exist!

5) Fresh, organic, in-season beets are now in the grocery store. Mmmmm... roasted beets...

Small things...

2009-02-11T10:13:00.001-08:00

I just ran across a series of posts from this blogger:

http://futurehousefarm.blogspot.com/

called 'Grace in Small Things...'

I thought it was a neat idea, and feel like I've been grumpy and disaffected lately.

So, in the spirit of admiration from afar and imitation as the finest form of flattery, I am going to copy them, and start my own listing!

I'll see if I can limit myself to five a day... ; )

Creeped out...

2009-02-10T14:33:00.000-08:00

So, I was on a web page, where I had to put in some information.

Several hours later, I was at a completely different web page.

But a special deal regarding the first web page's information showed up in the advertising banner at the top of the page.

Sometimes cookies creep me out.

Spring is coming.

2009-02-10T14:06:00.000-08:00

The astronomer in me feels that this is true.

But so does the gardener. After some frustration with web order forms, I've ordered all the seeds for this year's vegetable garden. We finally begin to feel we know how to do it. And there are so many things to try! But mostly tomatoes. And potatoes. Hoo boy! Must be the Irish in me that makes it so that I can buy an 80# sack of potatoes in the fall, and eat them ALL before they sprout! Maybe this year, we won't have to buy 'em!

Home... soon!

Could I have been...

2009-02-10T14:02:00.001-08:00

Tim Reynolds makes me want to learn to play... well, anything really. But maybe drums. It's the only thing I could imagine playing with that kind of intensity.

Dude. The guy's seriously amazing. Every time he comes around on my Pod, I have to stop everything else I'm doing.

Word of the Day: Generalist

2009-02-09T14:07:00.000-08:00

The local NPR affiliate has a terrific radio program called University Focus, in which a chair or director of a program at UNM is interviewed about what's happening in that department. This weekend's guest was the head of the Education School. She delivered a broad overview of what each person in her area was doing, and how it impacted the broader field. She was able to explain all of this cogently, and talk about the interfaces between the sub-fields so that even I was nodding along. At one point, she paused to explain to the interviewer (unapologetically, I might add) that she is a generalist---curious about everything, hyper-aware of the big picture, and the interconnections between sub-fields. And I thought, 'I'm one of those!' Now, here's what's interesting:

1) I didn't have this word before. I had 'specialist', but not 'generalist', and that says something important about the culture I inhabit. I have never heard one of my colleagues call themselves this. They ALWAYS say they 'specialize in' this or that.

2) Because I didn't know the word, I didn't know myself. I get frustrated with people or situations that require me to specialize. I thought this was a character flaw, not a strength. I work primarily with specialists, and have always been troubled that I just don't obsess about the fourth significant digit in the same way they do. I thought there was something wrong with me, partly because my specialist colleagues so often denigrate the big picture. (i.e. 'The first thing we should do with all these E/PO people is take them out in the backyard and shoot them.' Yep, someone actually said this to me, casually, over lunch. Youch. Still having trouble not over-reacting to the casual shooting talk... I probably over-reacted a little. Ok. Maybe a lot.)

3) Because I didn't know the word, I didn't have the idea, and I couldn't plan around my strengths. Here in Socorro, I've been learning that, while I think it's fun to dabble in specialization, it's not because I'm interested in the specific specialization. It's because I'm interested in the idea of specialization and the people who specialize. Other people are MUCH better at chasing down every last detail, and taking 18 months to get the bandpass right. It's not that I don't care, or don't think it's important. It's just not captivating to me. I'm not intrinsically good at it. Oh, I actually would do it. I'd spend days tamping down the noise in an image, or perfecting the gaussian fit to a maser spot. I'd drag myself to it day after day, instead of rushing to it. And the last few years, the dragging feeling for this kind of work has gotten much, much worse. I thought this meant I was lazy, and getting lazier. Lazy? No. Probably not. It's crazy, the things we do to ourselves in our own heads.

4) The word explains a lot of things that have been mysterious to me. It explains my Black Holes talk. It explains why I'm so good at public talks, and teaching, and E/PO. It explains why people tell me that I could probably talk about tax law, and still make it interesting to a general audience. It explains why some other people are not this way, and can not do this. It explains why my advisor and I had such a clash of wills. He was a specialist, and expected me to be one too. It drove him crazy when I'd give broad overview in the first 35 minutes of a talk, and spend 10 minutes delving into the details of my data reduction, and then ask for questions. It explains why I dread talks to specialists about specialties. Oh, I can do it. I can even do it so they love it. But once it's over, I forget it, and I spend no more time thinking about it, refining it, thinking about how I could do it better next time. But I do this for more general talks. They'll keep me up at night, thinking of new, better metaphors, long after the talk is over.

5) When the word showed up in my head, it caused an almost physical sensation of a mental paradigm shift. An appropriate metaphor is that I had a foot stuck in the mud, and a quarter of my attention focused behind me, because that's the direction everyone else was looking. Suddenly, that foot has come free, and my attention is one-hundred percent in the direction I've actually been going. Bigger steps are possible, without that one foot always stapled down someplace I didn't want to be. That's kind of terrifying actually, to recognize that I've not been completely devoted to the things I'm good at. Terrifying for a lot of reasons. It's probably going to terrify a lot of people too, who seem to think they have a stake in what I do. ; )

I think I was just ready to own this word, and the idea it represents. I had to come to Socorro to know for certain that I COULD be a specialist, which makes it much easier not to be one. That sounds odd, but makes a lot of sense for someone like me, who also has issues about being told she can't do things. (Want me to do something? Tell me I can't, especially in the sense of mayn't. Oy. Such an Achilles heel, that.) I am now certain that I don't want to be a specialist of this kind. The research institution's brand of single-minded devotion is something I'm capable of, but it chafes in the long term. That doesn't mean I have a short attention span. It means I have a broad attention span. (to shift the metaphor from time to space...)

It helps a lot that I recently met Richard Sabo in Montana, an extremely distinguished retired surgeon, (once President of the American College of Surgeons---wow) who commented to me off-hand that he wasn't sure he'd want to be a surgeon now, because the field is so specialized. He'd hate to do only gall bladders. All gall bladders, all the time. I knew what he meant, but I didn't have a word for it. Now I do. He's a generalist. Ah. I get it now. I'm one of those.

Secret efforts...

2009-02-05T08:46:00.000-08:00

So, sometimes you don't really talk about what you are doing, because of a superstitious belief that if you do, you will lose your momentum, or get side-tracked, or talked out of it, or talk yourself out of it. Or maybe you just feel like it's so far from what you are normally doing that you aren't 'supposed' to be doing it, and you might get in trouble.

At any rate. Out of the closet come I. This is a scary moment! Eep! Crack the door... peer around out there... see what it looks like... poke out my toe... go for it!

The first draft of my first novel is done.

The rewrites through chapter 4 are done. I'll continue rewrites this weekend. My A#1 reader tells me he had chills at the end of the prologue. That's good, because that's what I was after.

I'm actually going to finish this one.

Anybody know how to get a novel looked at by a publisher?

Catching up...

2009-02-03T10:53:00.000-08:00

with the blogs...

And I found a nice post at RealClimate:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/02/irreversible-does-not-mean-unstoppable/

Just in case you were getting all depressed about the latest climate reports... I tag it here so I can find it again in the fall.

Oh, and there's a lovely piece from Adam about the joys of being a father. Thanks for sharing, Adam! There's so much love in that house.

I'll catch up with FaceBook later. OMG. What have I gotten myself into? How do people keep up with all this?!

Montana dreamin'

2009-02-03T10:33:00.001-08:00

Just back from Bozeman, Montana (with a brief 32-hour stop at the homestead---including the Superbowl party!). I killed. I say that because I was talking to the public about interferometry and Fourier transforms, and not only did they laugh at my jokes, and ask lots of good questions, but they asked me to come back in July for their big Yellowstone star party. (Picture me blowing on my fingernails and polishing them on my lapels. If I wore lapels.)

Here are a couple of photos of me and my new friends Richard and Melanie at Yellowstone! The most amazing thing is the way the steam condenses on the trees. The shopping bag photo is in front of Old Faithful, and contains a totally sweet jigsaw puzzle of a geologic map, and a book called 'The Mind of the Raven', which is mostly about ravens being smarter than you ever imagined. Gosh. Nature. Wow.

Heard on NPR...

2009-01-22T07:58:00.000-08:00

If you missed it, listen to this hilarious conversation with John Boehner (House Minority Leader) on Morning Edition. The most hilarious part is his argument that NASA (a science agency, with scientific instruments on its satellites) should not get 400 M$ to study climate change, because money has already been allocated to the CIA (a spy agency with spy instruments on its satellites) to study it. WTF? Oh, and he doesn't see how that spending would help the economy. He seems to think that NASA actually puts the money on rockets and launches it into space, instead of employing thousands of scientists, engineers, IT wonks, mechanics and secretaries. Nimrod.

It's so cute. They don't even know what to do with themselves. As witness wossname Cornyn (R-Texas), being a real p.i.t.a. just for spite. Tee-hee.

Funny. I don't remember politics EVER being this interesting before... I can watch Barack roll back Bush policy all day long. That's my boy.

Yum!

2009-01-21T07:17:00.001-08:00

So one thing that I'm really, really going to miss when I leave Socorro (besides all the new friends!), is the Berry Good Blend from the Navajo store. This is awesome. I put a handful in my oatmeal every morning. Unsweetened berries of all kinds, all dried up. I don't even need sugar, the berries are so good. It's just mixed berries. Just dried up. Yum. None of the supermarket kinds even come close. It's sad, because I don't think they'll mail them to me. I'll have to learn to make my own, I guess.

The International Perspective...

2009-01-20T14:02:00.000-08:00

12 people came to coffee today. Of these 12, only 1 was American (me); 2 were from India, 2 from Japan, 1 from Australia, 1 from Canada, 1 from Mauritius, 2 from China, 1 from Taiwan, 1 from the Netherlands. This is typical here. Not only am I often the only woman around, but I'm almost always the only American. I get a good cross-section of opinion from lots of different backgrounds around the entire planet. (Sometimes I have to translate, because the clash of accents can be really disorienting!)

The general mood is optimistic and happy, even though most of these people are not citizens. All are very excited to say goodbye to Bush, (who is pretty much despised by all).

There was some mystification about the actual ceremony, and why it comes so long after the election. I think everyone sort of feels that way!

There was a lot of mystification about all the sermons and religious language. Several people asked me about it, and I explained that a lot of this religious stuff is relatively recent, since the Red Scare about the 'godless communists' in the 1950's. This was greeted with disbelief. Most agreed that pretty much the best thing about communism is that it is godless. (I neglected to take note of what the 2 Chinese people thought about this part of the discussion. Too bad, because it would be interesting to know what they think about it.) The general feeling was that they can't see how a supposedly secular government can be filled with all this religious pomp. I have to admit that I agree!

The Canadian was bent about the 'hero-worship' aspect of American politics. But they still have a queen up there, so he doesn't get to tell me 'How we do it in Canada...'. He caught a lot of flack for his criticism.

But all of these people see this day as a turning point, a moment when they no longer have to apologize or explain the politics of their choice of current country to their friends in their home country. The world is watching, from right here in tiny Socorro, NM!

Several are coming to my house this evening to watch (or re-watch) the speech, and lift a glass in celebration. Fun!

The quiet...

2009-01-20T09:10:00.000-08:00

was astounding. It feels like the whole world was waiting to hear what this man had to say. A breathless pause. A universal moment of silence. And in that silence, here's what I heard.

We will restore science to its rightful place...

We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals...

America is a friend to every nation and every man, woman and child...

We are ready to lead once more...

A collective failure to make hard choices.

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them.

Power grows through prudent use.

...roll back the specter of a warming planet...

Our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness.

People will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.

The world has changed, and we must change with it.

A new era of responsibility.

I'm all fired up and ready to go!

John Williams!

2009-01-20T09:02:00.000-08:00

I didn't know that was coming!!! How fun to have new music written by one of America's greatest composers, just for the day, and such super-luminaries to play it!!!! Wow!!! And what a beautiful piece. "Air and simple gifts", it's called, if you missed it.

And it's now 12:01. Power has passed, whether the words have been said or not.

And here comes John Roberts. And Michelle with the Lincoln Bible. And Roberts did it wrong! Tee-hee.

Here's the speech....

Time to change...

2009-01-20T08:26:00.000-08:00

the passwords.

I just realized this morning, as I was logging in to all my computers and applications, that for the last few years, my password set has been based on the first line of A Tale of Two Cities. I will have to now think of a new password set that more accurately reflects my more positive mood.

I hope all of you are enjoying this uniquely American celebration of the peaceful transfer of power. The pictures of the Mall are absolutely astonishing. Millions of people all over D.C. just to be there on this incredible day. Lucky them. What a good day. What a good day. What a good day.

Lots of talk about the racial boundaries being crossed, but almost as important, I think, is the socioeconomic boundary. This is the first time in my life that a person has risen from poverty to the highest office in the land. I think I had assumed (without thinking too much about it) that that could not happen any more.

What a good day.

Here he comes!!!! Back later.

A big weekend...

2009-01-16T14:33:00.000-08:00

coming up!

Saturday is a normal weekend day---schlep laundry to the laundromat, go to the grocery store, go to the post office to mail more g.c. to John, clean the house, go to the library. That'll be about 7 miles of walking by the time I get all that done. I might start by taking myself out for pancakes!

Sunday, I'll have time to start rewrites on Altamira. Eep!

Monday is MLK day, an NRAO holiday, so a group of us are going for a 10-mile hike. It's going to be 60 degrees here, so it's perfect weather for a big hike! That'll eat up almost the whole day, by the time we meet up, head out, walk up the mountain, eat lunch, walk down the mountain, head back, etc.

Tuesday is Inauguration Day, so I pretty much plan on the whole day evaporating, and accomplishing nothing but watching all the fun on the interweb. Then the group is coming over in the evening to lift a glass or two in honor of the day! Hooray! Nobel-prize-winning physicists advising our government! (This particular one was an NRAO summer student, it turns out---which is a fun fact...)

Pretty much, I'm planning on a four-day weekend. It's good to be on sabbatical...

Newbie introduction...

2009-01-15T16:30:00.000-08:00

For the CASA documentation?

Check.

You almost feel sorry for these people, don't you? Isn't it good that it's not YOUR job to ply me with things to do?

New Assignments

2009-01-15T06:58:00.000-08:00

1) write 4-page introductory introduction to CASA. (The current introduction runs 60 pages. It's more of an... overview... than an introduction!)

2) build a few mockups of what a status and forecast page might look like, for all the poor schlubs who are sitting at their home Universities, and starting to be terrified that they won't know what to do with the data coming out of the correlator.

3) a few minor adjustments to the spreadsheet.

Apparently, this is supposed to take me the remaining ~8 weeks of my time here.

So I think I'll write a grant proposal. ; )

One thing I've learned is that spending time at a 4-year, underfunded, teaching University makes you really, really efficient about using your time. And spending time at a research institution encourages you to think about things. That's not meant to be a criticism. It's not bad, it's just different. They have a tendency to overthink, and I have a tendency to slap things together and call it good. It takes all kinds to make the world go 'round...

Zip... zip...

2009-01-14T13:48:00.000-08:00

Arg. Second Wednesday of the month.

Pizza lunch AND cake AND extra coffee. zip.

I can barely type.

But at least I'm not hallucinating!

The interim Ta-Da list.

2009-01-12T10:53:00.001-08:00

The last post was a list of what I intended to do, and where I was on those projects. But not everything I've done was on the list of things to do. This is where the ta-da list comes in. It's the list of what I've done. If there was a Venn diagram, the two lists would overlap, but not completely. The ta-da list makes room for all the things that you didn't even think of before you started.

a) Organized and evaluated the CASA project. Seriously, this is huge. I'll probably get no publications out of it, but the people running the project just keep telling me how grateful they are that I came here and did this for them. They have a sense of accomplishment and a sense of purpose and a sense that they might someday actually finish the g.d. thing. That was missing when I got here.

b) Re-learned radio astronomy. I still feel pretty novice and tentative, and have days when I'm completely confused, but my confidence grows day by day, and I've remembered what closure errors are and why I care.

c) Analyzed continuum and spectral-line data on about 15 sources. Discovered some weirdnesses, and did some solid science.

d) Figured out what's new in radio astronomy, learned about the upcoming EVLA and it's correlator, become knowledgeable about the new software, and made new contacts and collaborations.

e) Got Barack Obama elected in Socorro County. ; ) (well, not single-handedly, but still!) Learned to canvass, got involved in politics, and met a huge number of people. Knocked on hundreds of doors and made thousands of phone calls. I also made signs. And helped on election day. And spent entirely too much time reading political blogs on the interweb.

f) I learned stuff. General stuff, specific stuff, lots of stuff. I read a lot of books about the economy, about politics, about plague. I understand more about why we are in the mess we are in than I ever would have if I had more distractions available... I learned how to eliminate cockroaches, and learned about New Mexican history, cuisine and culture. I visited a matanza, dia de los muertos, and ruins from the pre- and post-colonial times. I learned to love green chile (not much to learn!), and learned to hate Taco Bell. I made more trips to WalMart than any person would care to admit to, and learned to hate it too. Cheap crap, sold cheap, and then the other stores close, and the cheap crap gets expensive. It's a mean-spirited business model, and I resent it.

g) I gave public talks (2), invited talks(4), colloquium talks (3), lunch talks (1), and chaired sessions (2). I went to meetings (lots) and conferences (2), and colloquia (lots). I learned that some people really, really need to go take a class in public speaking, and some people just need to learn to speak louder. I watched the people watching the people, and learned that approximately half the time, any given person is not thinking about what's happening in front of them. Even if they are interested.

h) I learned a lot about the environment, got a grip on solar cells, wrote worksheets and activities for a class, and thought hard about what the point is.

i) I planned a one-week summer course for teachers.

j) I wrote letters of recommendation (4), letters of support (2), reports (3), and proposals (2). I wrote (all but the last chapter of) a novel.

k) I learned more about Open Office than anyone should need to know, ever.

l) I was reminded that you can move to a new place with two boxes, two duffel bags and a bicycle, and be pretty much content, except for missing all the people and creatures you left behind. 600 square feet is a lot of space if you are one person with no furniture. It's barely too small if you are two people and a good-sized dog. This is useful knowledge just now. It's keeping me from panicking about the economy.

m) I figured out that I hate to write science papers, and why I procrastinate about writing them. And then I figured out what to do about it.

n) I figured out that my presence in committees at WSU is over-rated, and apparently unnecessary. This will bring so much future joy to my life. You have no idea.

o) I learned to live without a car.

p) I learned to like running.

q) I learned to cook a mean spanish rice, acquired an addiction to potato-chile-cheese burritos, and rediscovered the joy of the humble cast iron pan.

r) I learned that the well-funded research institution is a myth. Everybody, everywhere, has the same problem: too few resources for what they are trying to do. Maybe the planet is too small for the dreams of all the people on it.

s) I learned lots of new spanish words. And a lot of spanglish.

There's probably more. But it's time for lunch...

Interim report.

2009-01-12T10:18:00.000-08:00

I woke up this morning, and thought, "I wonder if I can just go home?" mostly because I'm tired of Socorro, and feeling homesick, and missing everybody.

So then, I thought, "How would I know if I could do that?" and then I thought, "Wait, didn't I write a list of goals somewhere?" So I looked back through my posts, and there, on the very first post, was a list. I think I need an interim report on where I am, so I can answer the above question.

"a) The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO)... I'm off to Socorro to make myself useful to them. I'll definitely be doing some documentation. I'll definitely be doing some software testing. I'll definitely be doing some radio astronomy..."

I have done some documentation, I have done some software testing. In fact, I did an entire audit of the entire software package that is necessary to handle the ~1,000-fold increase in data complexity that comes with the EVLA. I helped the group figure out where they are (pretty much on time), and then I helped them make a plan. And then I went in and figured out some specifics of specific packages. At the moment, I am the most expert user of the package anywhere. So that's fun. I also did some radio astronomy. I took some data and got a surprising result. I have new collaborators, and I've worked with them to analyze some data they took years ago, and never got around to analyzing. I have a meeting with them on Thursday to talk about it.

Remaining: to write these things up for publication. Arg. There are at least three papers here to be written. I have discovered that I hate that part. Not so much the writing, but the dealing with referee's comments. I have realized that this is because I have never published two papers on the same thing. That means that when referee's comments come back (typically after six months or a year!), I've completely forgotten how to do the analysis, so I fundamentally have to start over, instead of just polish up. I think I'll stick to radio astronomy for a while, and see if I can get my pub. rate up by at least sticking to the same software for a while. ; )

I also need to check with Gustaaf, and find out what else he needs me to get done on the software project before I go.

b) ... the Physics Department has an environment course on the books that hasn't been taught... ever, as far as anyone can tell. Won't it be fun to create such a course and teach it in the fall of 2009, when I'm back from sabbatical? ...to read all about it, and invent fun classroom activities that make the physics of global warming real to my students.

I've created an outline, chosen a book, and done a lot of reading. I've lined up at least one guest speaker, and am working on a couple of field trips. I've put some thought into classroom activities, but have not actually written them up in any sort of detail. I got derailed for a while by discussions that were going on at home about whether I'd teach the class, and then got derailed again by the slumping economy, and wondering whether I'd actually get to teach the class.
Remaining: some classroom activities, a syllabus and a more detailed outline.

c) We've all of us been doing an enormous amount of work lately, that remains completely undocumented. Science in the Parks. The K-8 core. Studies of learning in the planetarium environment. ... and I really should finish that paper that Mike and I worked on.
Remaining: all of this. Sigh. No, wait. I did a draft of the Science in the Parks article for Mercury. I wonder what I did with that?

d) Soon, the planetarium is going to need to be updated again. 'Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but someday...' This is a 1 M$ project, probably. Guess I'd better write some grants. grumble, grumble.
Remaining: all of this. Sigh. And no sign of improvements in staff support anywhere. I really need to think about whether this is even possible without better staff support.

e) I need to find that place in my head where the ideas just come swimming up, rising like bubbles through my mind, and bursting open with a sweet scent and a flash of light that makes it seem like anything is possible.
f) So by the time I come back, I want to feel like I've got the intestinal fortitude to make all those possibilities into realities.
Remaining: Keep at it. But morale is really bad here, and I'm not sure these are going to happen in this locale!

g) If I don't need brain surgery, then there are a number of secret things that I want to see if I can do: a sprint triathlon before I'm 40;
Remaining: Don't need brain surgery! I forgot about that! Boy, that'll cheer a person up, I tell you what. But I've not done much about the triathlon since arriving in Socorro. I've gone for lots of walks, ridden my bike a lot more than usual, and generally been pretty active, but, well, I should probably go running this afternoon.

g2) finish my book;
Remaining: I have to write the concluding chapter, and then the first draft will be done. Then, I have some rewrites. I have some consistency issues, keeping track of items, and how many people are in the room, etc. I also made some later changes to technology to make the story work better, and I have to go back and fix up the earlier chapters. But the first draft is almost done!

g3) learn one-tempi changes;
Remaining: Um, all. However, John's new horse already knows these, so I can learn them from him when I get home! (The horse, not John!) But I definitely can't do this from here.

Ok. So that's a lot. I'll make a list, and get back to you... oh, but before that. I need a ta-da list. That's probably a whole separate post.

The weird square thingy...

2009-01-06T12:24:00.000-08:00

Right. So finally I asked somebody about the weird square thingy. We discussed it, and agreed it couldn't be a problem with clean. So he suggested I go back to the visibilities.

So I went back to the U-V plane, to look at the data. Yup. There it is. A couple of U-V visibilities needed to be flagged. No more weird square in two channels.

But all of this just points out that we darn well better invent autoflagging before the new correlator comes completely on line. It's one thing to look at data from 256 channels. It's a completely other thing to look at data from 100,000 channels. No one will use the thing if they have to find 'bad' data by hand.

So that's my next task. To figure out... wait for it... where the group is with the autoflagging. Because no one can remember.

Everything humans can consume...

2009-01-06T12:00:00.000-08:00

is an appropriate delivery system for green chile.

Grilled ham and cheese and green chile. (Be sure to smoosh the edges of the bread together so the chile doesn't fall out while it's cooking!) This is my latest g.c. invention, and it's the best improvement on grilled cheese since sliced bread. Seriously. What am I going to do when I get home and I can't just buy it at the store anymore?!

Apparently, the green chile harvest has been falling in recent years. This year it's down 30% (I'm unclear if that is relative to some average, or to last year). "Why?" you ask. Because southern New Mexico has been getting too much rain. D'oh.

Wait...

2008-12-29T11:06:00.001-08:00

what was I doing?

Where's my pencil?

What does this cryptic note mean: 'vague recollections of the weird square thingy'?

How do I log in to my computer again?

Password... password... password... I'm sure I had one.

D'oh. Return from very busy time away. Man. I'm sure there was a plan around here someplace.

More antics from Captain...

2008-12-18T13:04:00.001-08:00

It's been a week now, and Captain has clearly settled in. He went for big hikes yesterday at the VLA, and had a wonderful time. He was good both on and off the leash, and then came home and snoozed the rest of the evening. He snores. Little whiffly dog snores. It's painfully cute. He also plays with toys, which is new for us.

Today, J joined the lunch group at DJ's. He was oddly nervous, but of course got along fine. Everyone should have a stuffed sopapilla from DJ's at least once in their life. Seriously. It's practically a religious experience. Everyone was very interested in his reaction to Socorro. I know why---people often really, really hate it. But, as J says, green chile sure makes up for a lot of empty space!

What is UP with...

2008-12-18T09:31:00.000-08:00

scientists who are also programmers? (apologies to J, who is not this type...)

Here's the gist of a recent conversation:

Me: Does this widget graph the sum or the average?

Him: Average, but it doesn't matter.

Me: Yes it does.

Him: The only difference is that you divide by the number of pixels. It's a constant. It doesn't matter.

Me: But most of my pixels contain only noise. So the average doesn't tell me what I need to know. The average tells me there's nothing there, because on average, there isn't.

Him: You're just off by a constant.

Me: Sort of. But not really. I'm really beating down the signal, by averaging over all the noise. If I sum, I know how much signal I have, but if I average, I know some kind of signal per pixel, which is really, really tiny, because I'm looking at emission in a really tiny area. That's not what I want it to do. I want to see a graph of the signal, and I can't do that if I've just averaged it to zero.

Him: So just multiply by the number of pixels.

Me: But the way the widget works, I get there by drawing a box with the mouse around the object, and the widget doesn't tell me how many pixels it has. And anyway, how am I supposed to do a multiplication in the widget, so I get a graph of what I want?

Him: So just make a one pixel box.

Me: But that's a huge pain. Why should I have to go and make a bunch of one pixel boxes, when if I could just get the sum, it wouldn't be a problem? And how is that going to help anyway, because I don't have a way to add the pixels together again?

Him (condescendingly): You're not making any sense. It's just a constant offset, and it doesn't matter. I mean, come on. It's basic arithmetic. If you divide, and then you multiply, that's the same as not doing anything at all.

Me: (sigh. Rapid silent search for compromise...) Can you humor me, and make it so I can choose if it will sum or average? Some people might want one or the other.

Him: (walking away from me...) That doesn't make any sense. No. It averages. That's what it does.

Me: (grumble, grumble, grumble)

Now I am trying to figure out a way to sum, but not average.

Grumble, grumble...

Some Perspective

2008-12-17T09:25:00.000-08:00

It's pretty hard, right at the moment, to keep everything in perspective. Between all of our own personal dramas, the local dramas that come with the tragically bizarre collapse of the economy, and the global dramas that come from not being able to keep our grubby mitts off yesterday's sunshine, a person can get seriously overwhelmed.

But then, you get to see this.

Please allow me to interpret the sci-jarg. The dot in the middle of the left image is an optical image of a galaxy that formed very early in the Universe. How early? About 12.8 billion years ago. You are looking at it as it forms, because the light that left during formation is just now getting to us. Ok. Go away and think about that for a minute, because that should blow your mind right there.

Back? Ok. The image on the right is of the same object, in the radio. Specifically, you are looking at the light emitted from carbon monoxide (CO). Go away again, and ponder the existence of carbon monoxide, only 870 million years after the Big Bang. Need some help with the staggering-ness? C and O form in stars. The existence of CO means there were stars that lived AND died before this big cloud could form. AND the cloud had time to cool enough for the C and the O to get together and share some electrons over coffee and a biscuit. AND the cloud had time for gravity to begin to draw it together to form something new. 870 Myrs is not very long for all of that to happen! The first stars must have been very, very massive, and very, very short-lived in order to get all this done in that short time. So, go. Ponder.

Back? Ok. So now you have to think about this. You are looking at a supermassive black hole (some millions of times the mass of the sun), and a giant elliptical galaxy (trillions of times the mass of the sun, eventually forming trillions of stars) being 'born'---at the same time, in the place, very early in the history of the Universe. Staggeringly, this is exactly how we thought it should happen. Staggeringly, I can explain it to you. Staggeringly, you can understand. Score one for the teeny-tiny, microscopic gray matter connections inside your head.

One of the biggest comforts of being an astronomer is knowing that the vast majority of the Universe doesn't care about me. It just does what it does. It goes on in all its profligate excesses of space and time, and all its random happenstance, whether or not I'm paying any attention at all.

Another comfort is that I am paying attention. And my own little gray matter adds its little pieces to the puzzle, which are written down, and so will be remembered long after we've forgotten all this year's particular drama, and the last of yesterday's sunshine is all used up.

Surprise! A conference...

2008-12-16T12:55:00.000-08:00

Well, other people knew about it, I'm sure...

There are ~95 people here for three days for a conference about the EVLA, and galaxy formation and evolution across all redshifts. (While this is not an area of special interest for me, personally, I can still learn a lot!)

I didn't have to plan. I didn't have to travel. I don't even have to present (which is good, because it was a surprise to me, and I'm not an expert in galaxies!!).

This is almost sinfully easy. Just sit there, and let the conferences come to you... Ahhh...

Love comes walkin' in.

2008-12-15T11:40:00.001-08:00

It's been a rough couple of weeks, filled with loss and sorrow and grief. The loss of Cassie, the loss of our good friend Chris, the sorrow of our good friend Nereyda. Monumental events and changes and mind-numbing grief. Even the little things seemed to go wrong, and I spent more time these few weeks waiting for the plumber than I usually do all year. Grief brought inattention, and therefore myriad small mistakes, and very little energy in reserve to help deal with them. Sometimes, sorrow comes to visit, and decides to stay a while, leaving his dirty socks all over the floor, soaking the floor of the bathroom when he showers, going through your stuff, and insisting that you accommodate his special diet of candy, cornflakes, beer and some kind of meat.

But even the sorrow that takes up the spare room and messes up your whole house can't keep joy standing on the porch. Because therapy doesn't always come on the psychiatrist's couch. Sometimes it comes on the sofa at home.

This is Captain. A 3-year-old Australian Shepherd---snook-monster extraordinaire. Never has a dog liked so many scratches and belly-rubs. Never has a dog's face gone so fast from tightly wrinkled concern, uncertainty and worry to eyes-wide-open, smiling laughter. Never has a dog made a faster transition from curled-up-flat-eared-defensive to flat-on-his-back, open-to-all-experiences, begging-for-tummy-rubs.

And never have we been so grateful to be the kind of people who sometimes leap even when we can't quite see the bottom.

Goodbye, Cassie...

2008-12-02T07:11:00.000-08:00

Last Friday, we lost our best friend to a fierce, but blessedly short, battle with cancer. Today, I've been thinking about why the house feels so completely empty, even though it's only 60 pounds emptier than it was last week.

Cassie made us come home from work. We have the kinds of jobs that never close and are never finished. People like us need someone to make us turn off the computer and come home, and then turn off the computer again. She made us get outside and go for walkies, even in the snow or rain or fierce heat of summer. She made us wait to go in to work until after dawn. She made us laugh with her antics, and kept us from sleeping all day when we were sad. She made us stop and look at the beautiful view while we waited for her to stop chasing moose and come back to us. She made us clean up the kitchen right away, and pack up the leftovers, and put the bread away before we left the house or went to bed. She'd show up at the bedside with the baguette sticking out of both sides of her face, wiggling for all she's worth; 'Papa, can I have this?' She ate the extra rice from the Chinese food place, and cleaned up the crumbs under the table. But she NEVER, EVER licked the dishes in the dishwasher. (That's still a mystery to me...) Anyone saying 'Oops!' in the kitchen suddenly had company, even if she was sound asleep on the sofa.

Cassie tracked mud all over the house, so we had to get the vacuum out and scrub the floors. There was always a muddy towel on the porch near the back door---a badge of the 'feet wipes' after the last muddy hike in Strong's Creek. She was famous in Washington for finding spawned salmon, other dead fish or seals. A flying leap from 6 feet away; a turn in midair; her shoulder landing with a 'splorsh'; an unbearable stench, and happy, smiling dog face. We'd drive home with our heads hanging out the car window, and Cassie just as happy as can be in the backseat. Sometimes she ate god-only-knows-what, and heaved it up in a little pile in the living room at midnight. We'd be out of bed at the first heave, and almost never got her all the way out the door in time. But she was always sorry about it, as only a dog can be sorry---all puppy-dog eyes and feet in the air.

Her hair got in the furnace filter, which reminded us to change it once in a while. It got in the lint trap in the dryer, and in the sheets, and behind the sofa cushions. It got under the bookcases, and behind the refrigerator, and under the bed. We had to buy special cleaning tools to reach those places. We probably never would have cleaned the car if she didn't make it such a mess sometimes.

She took us camping, and crawled into the sleeping bags when it was really, really cold. She watched the chukkar babies, lying in perfect stillness, only rolling her eyes to follow their movement through the campsite, sitting up to smile and dog-laugh only after they'd gone. She let us know where the skunks were. She let us know when someone was on the property. She let us know when friends were at the door, or when it was the ultimately evil UPS man. She made us cut short visits with friends, and trips to just about everywhere. We had to make special plans if we wanted to go out at night, because she'd get spiteful and surgically slice the straps on our work-bags if we left her all day AND all evening. She knew she was too good for that, and was not going to put up with that kind of behavior. We had to look at every package that came into the house, to see if it would be interesting to her. This, after a 50 pound bag of flour wound up spread all over the kitchen carpet, drooled on, and worked into the carpet fibers, dried on like cement. Yummy. She made us finally get rid of the ugly carpet we hated anyway.

A lot of people see these things as a pain. They roll their eyes and say, 'How can you STAND it?!' But these things are a gift. Learning to compromise, to accommodate, to think as a completely different species thinks and see the world as a completely different species sees it, reminds us that there IS another way. Everything she did made sense to her, even if it was a mystery to us. Making room for a creature with such a different way of being, finding a way to communicate and to love and to share beyond the species barrier, sharpened our skills for reading not only dogs, but also each other.

Of course the house feels empty. That's because it is.

On sabbatical from my sabbatical...

2008-11-20T14:20:00.001-08:00

That's it. I'm outta here! Goin' home for T-day.

Back on 1 December.

Happy Thanksgiving to one and all.

The upside of having a 'boss'...

2008-11-18T09:28:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, it's really fun to have a 'boss'. Just yesterday, I finished the software audit that was supposed to take me until April. This morning, he tells me it's just what he wanted, only better.

So now I get to sit around and look pretty, while my 'boss' scrambles to figure out what to do with me for the next four months...

(Of course, I'll be busily pulling data out of the archive, and getting some science done in the meantime...)

It's fun to watch 'em sweat.

It's like 4th of July, for astronomers.

2008-11-17T15:36:00.000-08:00

I finally figured out what was wrong with Lorant's maser data. The techs had reset an antenna position in the middle of the run. So 75% of the data was flagged on import. D'oh. So I fixed it, and re-calibrated.

Now, I have a little movie that goes through the image cube, from one end of the spectral window to the other. And when I watch the little movie, the masers light up and fade out sequentially. All over the spatial dimensions.

It's like itty-bitty, noiseless fireworks.

Just for me.

Oh yeah. Weekends.

2008-11-17T14:37:00.000-08:00

I know this will make all of you nutty, but I just had a weekend. You remember those. I woke up on Saturday, and pretty much had nothing on the agenda but laundry, and dinner at a friend's house. Two hours later, laundry was done. So I went for a bike ride. I had no particular place to go. It was just nice out, so I rode my bike.

Then on Sunday, I woke up and had nothing on the agenda at all. I went out to breakfast at the coffee shop, and ran into some friends, so we ate together. Then I went for a walk to the duck pond. I wandered over to the NMT library to flip through their magazines. I went to the grocery store to buy a pencil. I sketched for a while, and took a nap, and then listened to music. Then I read a book.

I had forgotten that it was possible to get up in the morning and have nothing planned. Oh, yeah, and not immediately MAKE plans, out of sheer panic! ; )

Can I just say...

2008-11-13T09:29:00.000-08:00

I love my phone? This is what technology should be.

Yesterday, I finally straightened out a bunch of passwords and so on. Yes, yes, I should have done this weeks and weeks ago. But I didn't. Because I'm the kind of person who doesn't always solve problems right away if they require me to figure out a new approach... sad, but true.

So anyway. I now have a budget spreadsheet for keeping track of my expenses, several 'print' books, a number of audiobooks, music, games, tv shows and movies. All in my phone.

Ever since I arrived in Socorro, I've been using it to keep up with NPR, because local NPR doesn't carry a lot of things I really like at KUER. Marketplace, for example. How am I supposed to understand the economy without Marketplace?! How did I live before streaming audio from NPR?!

And I've used it to navigate, schedule appointments, look stuff up on the inter-web, connect with friends and family, check email from home and the laundromat, track packages, obsessively keep track of the stock market, make to-do lists, watch videos on YouTube, keep up my address book, and take, send and post photographs. I've also used it as an alarm clock to wake me up, and as a stopwatch to keep speakers on track at a conference.

This morning, I am doing a very tedious job of creating a spreadsheet that keeps track of the CASA project, and needed some new tunes to keep me going. So I purchased and downloaded the new Van Morrison. Right here at my desk. I just have to say, 'Way to go, Apple! I don't know how I ever got along without it!'

What are you using your phone for?

Sometimes...

2008-11-12T15:13:00.000-08:00

you just need a manager.

Which sounds funny coming from me, but it's true.

I was ranting to J about how this whole software project seems to lack a coherent vision, and any way of reporting problems, progress, etc.

Then I find out there IS no manager.

They are trying to hire one.

Have been for quite some time.

The project's doing pretty well for a bunch of scientists and developers just getting stuff done with no deadlines, meetings, oversight, or conflict resolver.

Back to work...

2008-11-10T13:36:00.000-08:00

So, with all that election chaos and emotion, you might be under the impression that no work is getting done.

But you'd be wrong!

I've acquired data (from the archive) on six masering OH/IR stars.
I've duly calibrated and reduced spectral-line data on two of these objects. I actually did that twice, because:
I've found two more bugs in the CASA code, and reported them to those who can fix 'em.
And then I reported a bug that wasn't a bug. It was just me not understanding what the code did. Oops.
I've found several unhelpful error messages that need to be reworded so that novice users will know what they've done wrong.
I've re-organized the CASA spreadsheet o' tasks, so that everything is not priority 1. Scientists. Sheesh.
I've investigated Bugzilla, Mantis and a couple of other programs as a better way to report problems to the development team. This, by the way, is a priority 1 task in the spreadsheet... ; )

So, that's all good. Especially since spectral line data is big and slow, and cleaning it can take your computer as long as four hours. If you do it right. The first time. Which never happens. ; )

Oh, and I also created a sweet Google-docs worksheet for the environmental physics class, as part of the semester-long project students are going to be doing. During which, I learned about solar hot-water heater installations.

And I read the appalling and terrible (but well-written and vitally important) book 'The Weather Makers' by Tim Flannery. Yep. Sometimes there's nothing to do but lay on the sofa and cry for the golden toad (extinct) and the polar bear (soon to be so). So now I know a lot more about climate change. That'll be helpful, as soon as I can wrap my head around it.

I list this all here, because I was thinking that nothing was getting done, and it was depressing me. But now I can go back to work, mightily cheered up!

Odd. Tomorrow is Veteran's Day. It's an NRAO holiday. And we're supposed to actually stay home. On a holiday. What's up with that?

The Man

2008-11-07T07:32:00.000-08:00

is spending this morning at parent-teacher conferences with Michelle.

And all of America is going 'Oh, crap. When's my parent-teacher conference? Oh crap. I'd better hitch up my pants, put a belt on and get my sorry butt to my kids' school.'

I keep fearing to get let down. And then he walks the walk, and does things I didn't even expect, that are such powerful messages to the people. Who ever would have expected that the president-elect of the United States of America, the most powerful person on the entire planet, would spend the Friday morning of election week in parent-teacher conferences?

For me, the higher standard is the parent-teacher conference, and not the solving of the economic crisis. Although I expect that too. Just, sort of, you know, if he can squeeze it in while he's changing the culture of the country to include things like responsible parenting, and caring about the future. Oh. He's on it? And getting advice from a wide array of stakeholders and experts? Even people of varying points of view? No lobbyists allowed? Oh. Good. Right on. I'll go back to responsibly doing my job then, and wait to hear about how I can help with the most excellent plan that will no doubt be devised.

Oh, another one.

2008-11-05T13:58:00.000-08:00

which lives in my head in Spanish, not English.

My first natively Spanish thought.

Si. Se puede.

And this one... which is Spanglish... sort of...

Obamanos.

Giddiness...

2008-11-05T13:33:00.000-08:00

We did it! After four weeks of stomping around NM, calling and knocking and heckling and annoying everyone we could find... After J in Utah calling and heckling and annoying people in CO, and even some in UT... After spending all of election Tuesday checking the polls, calling around, giving rides, and dragging people to the polls, calling, calling, calling, as late as 6:45 pm.

After all that... VICTORY!!!

I am still compulsively checking maps.

Is it really happening?

I have these little epiphanies. All last night, I kept waking up with them. And all day today. I suddenly stop typing, or trying to figure out what happened to my graphics display, or trying to figure out why my bandpass fails in the 245th channel. I suddenly am stopped dead in my tracks, and bits of words and fragments of images fly like birds across my mental landscape. Sunlight glints off of feathers.

We won.

HOPE vs. fear.

We saved ANWR.

Solar panels.

No offshore drilling.

Wind turbines.

Boots.

No one else to die for my car.

Education.

Service.

Ask not what your country can do for you...

Ask. of me.

Hope. Hope. Hope.

Roe v. Wade.

The Constitution.

Sex ed.

All people. Everywhere. ALL. Include. Encompass. Allow. Appreciate. Embrace. Enfold. Lift. Let fly.

The Supreme Court.

Nina Totenberg.

The Constitution.

Warrants for wire tapping.

Medicine for children.

Education.

Science.

... BECAUSE it is hard.

Help for the elderly.

Homes for the homeless.

Homes for the poor.

Homes for our veterans.

Homes.

Home.

Hope.

GOTV

2008-10-31T14:28:00.000-07:00

Go. Vote. Seriously.

I have been spending evenings and weekends canvassing for the Obama campaign. If you think things are bad for you, you should come spend some time in the barrio in Socorro. I have had some of the most amazing conversations with people. I talked for nearly half an hour with a guy who doesn't vote anymore, because the political system has failed him. What would get him to vote? New boots. He had boots straight out of the Great Depression---holes, cardboard, staples, yup. He worked as a laborer his whole life. Then he retired, mostly broken, at 65. SS no longer makes ends meet, Medicare doesn't cover his bills, and he's back to work. At 80 years old. With boots that have holes in them. Can't we do better than this for our elderly?

Or how about the veteran. I knocked on his door. Well, sort of a door. Just because you can see through the gaps around the frame doesn't mean it's not a door, right? He comes to the door in his wheelchair to answer it. I tell him I'm with the Obama campaign, and I'm working to get out the vote. As a veteran, he feels he needs to vote for McCain. I tell him I understand that, but would like to let him know about early voting anyway, and inquire if he needs a ride to the polls. Turns out he does. Can't we do better than this for our veterans?

So then I'm on the phones. Five elderly or disabled people took me up on our offer for a ride to the polls. They had no other way to get there. Several people needed help with their absentee ballots (Fill in the ovals all the way. Sign the outside. Put three stamps on.) Can't we do better than this for our citizens?

On Saturday, we are having a matanza on the plaza, to help get out the early voters. Free food always draws 'em in. For many of the people I talked to in the barrio, this will be the only time their children's bellies are full all week. Can't we do better than this for the poor?

And what about the woman I talked to on the phone who just lost her entire retirement savings in the stock market? Or the woman in the barrio who's holding down three jobs, and trying to get her kids to school? Or the man I talked to on the phone who has lost hope that America will ever live up to its ideals?

Even when I lived in Camden, NJ; even when I was teaching convicts in the penitentiary to read; even when I was planting community gardens in the poorest, most-crime-ridden neighborhood in one of the most violent cities in America; even when I was visiting some of the most inner-city of all inner-city grade schools in the country; even here, in the mostly Spanish-speaking barrios in Socorro; I have never, not even one time, met someone who fit the description 'undeserving poor'. It's a myth. A legend. A construct to make unfairness and unkindness seem acceptable. An invention that makes people feel better as they drive by the homeless guy, eyes averted. He's undeserving. I am not responsible. He's lazy. There is nothing I can do. He doesn't want to work. It's not my responsibility. He wants to be homeless. It's not my responsibility, it's not my responsibility, it's not my responsibility.

Go. Vote.

And then. (Yes, there's more.) Get involved. How many groups in your neighborhood could use your help---not your money, but your help? The library, the public schools, the food bank, the homeless shelter, the animal shelter, your local museums... all of these institutions are struggling, just as you are. Even if you've got no money to give, you can still do something to help out at the library, at the food bank. Pick one insitution. Pick one cause. Pick one person. Do something. Anything. I promise, it will make you feel big and strong and powerful. And it will fill you with hope. Isn't that better than television?

All these people the politicians are talking about---the hardworking rich, the undeserving poor, the noble poor, or the profligate rich---all these people are just people. They are your friends and your neighbors and the kids down the street. Just people. Just like you. Just trying to get by, any way they can. And some of 'em could have their lives turned around by getting a ride when they need it. Or a new pair of boots.

Go. Volunteer. Be part of your world. Have the courage to say 'Yes', 'I believe', and 'I will' (to paraphrase Taylor Mali). Have the courage to do something truly scary, and open yourself up to other people. I'll see you out there.

Never mind...

2008-10-30T10:07:00.001-07:00

Weird results... still there.

Turns out that during the period of my observations, they had some trouble with the instrumentation labeling sources incorrectly. So my calibrator was called by the name of my target, and vice-versa. CASA, apparently, knew about this, but AIPS did not.

So when I went to look at my target in AIPS, it was a point source. Which it should have been, because it was actually the calibrator. And then my calibrator was extended. Which it should have been, because it was actually my target. Did you catch that?

Un-poof.

Phew.

2008-10-29T14:25:00.001-07:00

That's over and done with. It went fine. The person who spoke before me (lunch talks are split here, so that they are more informal than most...) had a hard time. He had to defend both his data and his method. Fortunately, I got to present what I'm GOING to do. That's easier. And more fun!

In other news, I've been unable to reproduce my weird results on the nebula in the old software. I have one more thing I want to try before I let it go. It's possible that during the 'cleaning' process, I invented the extended emission. So I'm going to go back and redo it in the new software. That's science for ya---sometimes exciting results just... poof!... evaporate.

Holding pattern...

2008-10-29T09:18:00.000-07:00

I have to give a 20-minute talk today at noon. I haven't given a 20 minute talk in, like, ever. Ok. That's not true. I did it just two weeks ago. But I got heckled a lot at that talk, because I was telling people something they didn't want to hear (namely that it's time scientists stepped up and took responsibility for the fact that the public don't know what they are doing...). This time, I'm going to be telling them something they don't want to hear about---stellar astronomy is a hard sell in a radio astronomy crowd. Most radio astronomers are interested in either

a) the nuts and bolts of radio astronomy, nearly literally. They love to know all the gory details about the circuitry, and the closure phases, and the system temperatures and the antenna gain. Blah, blah, blah. or

b) they are interested in extra-galactic astronomy. i.e. other galaxies, or the origin of gamma ray bursts, or supermassive black holes and their jets. Not stars. Not even dying ones.

So, walking in the door, I'm at a disadvantage. This is not an unfamiliar situation. As a physics professor, I'm used to talking to people who think they don't care about what I have to say.

On the other hand, also as a professor at a teaching institution, I'm a MUCH better speaker than most. I could be talking about paint drying and be more interesting than a lot of these presenters. (Very smart people, mostly personable in person, somehow convinced that all talks should be as devoid of personality as possible...)

But still, I will find it hard to get anything done this morning. My talk is ready, already. So I'm in a bit of a holding pattern, trying to concentrate on AIPS, while in the background of my head, there's a loop running of what I want to say in my talk. It's very distracting.

'That can't be right.'

2008-10-27T07:47:00.000-07:00

Hmmm.

So I've got this cool data, right? And that's fun and everything. But here's the thing. The image I have, taken this summer, is tilted 90 degrees from prior imaging in the same band. It's also twice the size. It's also bipolar in my two IF's (so at one frequency band, the left lobe appears, and in the other, the right lobe does). At first, without thinking very hard about it, I thought I understood that, but now I'm not sure. This is continuum emission, remember, not line emission. Even if it's Doppler-shifted to higher freq in one lobe and lower in the other, both lobes should at least show up. I shouldn't be able to detect such a thing, unless I'm coincidentally looking at a 5 GHz molecular line (the only one I know off-hand is formaldehyde (H2CO)... that's a pretty complex molecule for this environment) in a rotating disk or bipolar 'jets', and not getting any continuum at all. Not getting continuum? What's up with that?

So the first thing to do is go back and re-calibrate, and re-image the data using old-school tools (remember that I'm using and testing the new software package?). It is SO HARD to imagine anything that could be wrong in the new software that could produce these discrepancies, and that wasn't found before. I mean, seriously. A 90-degree rotation? Incorrect scaling? Somebody would have noticed these already. I'm sure of it. If Jupiter suddenly showed up twice as big as normal, someone would notice. I don't even know what to say about the IFs.

But it's also SO HARD to imagine an astrophysical scenario that could cause these kinds of changes in the 8-year period that we're talking about...

So that's what I'm doing today. Or, rather, re-doing today.

Kevlar, and Stalin?

2008-10-27T07:26:00.000-07:00

Got new bike tires this weekend. The roads do not get swept in Socorro as often as other places, and my canvassing duties are taking me into all kinds of barrios, where the roads are really treacherous for Old Blue. My new tires:

"feature a subtread barrier of DuPont Kevlar fabric impregnated with a Kevlar-engineered elastomer that seals all gaps in the fabric weave, along with a synthetic cap ply material that prevents sidewall cuts. This technological troika is designed to take whatever the road—or the trail—dishes out."

Isn't that fun? Don't you want a 'technological troika? ; ) The guy at the bike shop felt my pain, and let me talk him into ALSO filling the tube with gel, but was not enthusiastic about adding liners to my supposedly indestructable tires.

In other news, I am now officially the Stalin of the cockroach world. Off they go to the Gulag, with a potato and a spoon made of wire, to slowly starve to death. Oh yeah, or die of poisoned food. If I had planned this out in advance, it would have been so appallingly calculated that the entire planet would shake in fear of me ever even being on City Council. So here's what I did (in case I ever have this problem again, it will be helpful to have documentation): First, for about three weeks, I was irritatingly immaculate about food and water in the house, down to wiping down the water drops from inside the sink when I brushed my teeth, and drying out the tub when I was done taking a shower. The roaches were getting very hungry and thirsty. This cut them down by about 75%---especially the large german browns. I was down to seeing a couple at night in the bathroom---mostly infants. So I started leaving the lights on all night, making it even more uncomfortable for them to come out to forage. HA. I saw even fewer, but anyone who's dealt with roaches knows that they were still there. I just wasn't seeing them. So yesterday, when all the little creatures were more or less starving to death, and all the grownups have gone elsewhere or died, I put down baited traps, and turned out the lights. Dude. In a few minutes, I could HEAR them in there. Ew. So I went to bed. In the middle of the night, and this morning, before dawn, I headed into the bathroom to see how it was going. One dead roach on the floor. Otherwise, nothing. No noises, no roaches, nothing. In the epic, millenia-long battle of humans v. roaches, score one for humans. Give it a couple more days, and I might actually feel comfortable eating in my own house!

Totally, even sweeter astronomy...

2008-10-23T15:01:00.000-07:00

So, of course, the second thing you do is go read IN DETAIL, every single paper that ever even mentioned the interesting source you've just taken a picture of. Including the theory papers. Buried in those theory papers, you find a reference to a Nature paper, that you didn't find before, for who knows what reason.

And in THAT paper, (in 2001), Miranda et al. report that the age of the photo-ionized inner region of the nebula, deep down in the round part, near the center, is 15 years*.

Not a typo.

15.

years.

This nebula transitioned from proto-planetary nebula to planetary nebula in 1985. That was the year I started high school. Wow. How fun is that?!

That's every reason to study these objects, right there. They change during your lifetime, which is extremely unusual for astronomy!

* How do they know? This is a 'dynamical age'. Basically, they measure the velocity of the outflowing ionized gas (using the Doppler Effect), measure the size of the region (which is where you are going to have errors, because the distances are usually poorly determined), and then you divide the size by the speed to get the age. (This is the same logic as saying that you traveled 60 miles at 30 miles per hour, so it took you two hours.)

Totally sweet radio astronomy...

2008-10-21T12:33:00.000-07:00

Ok. So this is totally sweet. Look at those maps. Two maps of the same object at two different (but close together) radio wavelengths. It's a bipolar planetary. The primary emission at the central peak overlaps, as does the emission fAwesome!rom the bump to the west. The southeast lobe in the right-hand map is nearly mirror image of the northwest extended lobe+bump! This is really rare. We are seeing radio emission from the bipolar axes of the nebular outflow. What does it mean? It means that my little fishing expedition paid off, and we have an object that should be examined in LOTS more detail to look for magnetic fields! Sweet!

p.s. It's also fun that in the right image, there's a big Easter Island statue at the top. that's random... I'll have to look in the catalogs for a background object...

The problem with problems... part II.

2008-10-16T07:20:00.001-07:00

I got this response to 'the problem with problems' from a friend in 'industry':

Yes, the problem with the Problems -- what I would suggest you look into. . . How are the Project teams, -- and the Management of the project teams -- being rewarded. . . . if those two teams had the same set of rewards (bonus pools, targets. . ) would that bring cohesion to the group.

which was eye-opening. This is so interesting. So, we don't really do this in academia/science centers. I don't know anyone who's EVER gotten a bonus! I never really thought about it, but I guess it's expected that everyone is so invested in what they are doing, and so aware of how many people are relying on them, that we don't really have a 'reward structure' as such. Of course, you can be denied tenure, or promotion if you do a bad job, but that's a stick and not a carrot... much less effective, generally.

Even raises don't necessarily go with merit, an idea that would probably make my industry friend cringe. This is because the institutions are so strapped for cash that they often don't even make CoL increases, much less have extra for merit. In Utah, it's not uncommon for the legislature, year after year, to cut state university budgets, no matter what we do. This has, in the past, resulted in multiple consecutive years of no raises at all, and occasionally even pay cuts for faculty. This, while the institutions were growing in enrollment by leaps and bounds.

It's an interesting problem, because it leaves people feeling like they have no control, and are not valued. They can meet all their 'targets', increase enrollment, recruit new students, get more grants, do more research, publish more papers, and still see an effective pay cut. They can grow the University and it's reputation, produce a 'better product' that clearly people want to 'buy', and still, they see no reward for going above and beyond.

Come to think of it, this is probably the exact reason that so many 'government' projects come in late and over budget. There are actually effective penalties built into the system for coming in on-time and under budget.

But that doesn't mean it HAS to be that way. We're always being asked to run ourselves 'more like a business'. Presumably that would mean building in a reward structure, if that's the way it's done in business, right? Right?

I wonder what a reward structure in academia would look like? Does it really make sense to talk about year-end bonuses? That might be an effective, relatively low-cost way to improve faculty/staff retention, but on the other hand, depending on the criteria, it could put in pressures that we don't really want in the system... It never really occurred to me to wonder about the carrot before, because I was so busy worrying about the stick that I wasn't even looking for a carrot.

HA!

2008-10-15T13:20:00.000-07:00

I now have calibrated data.

So there, evil demons of antenna noise. You have been slain.

Oh. That sounds kind of weird. But honestly, half of calibrating data is rooting out bad data, (bad because of line noise or equipment failure or whatever), and then killing it with a click of the mouse. It's sort of super-hero-ish. Vanquishing the obscuring forces of chaos to get at the real Universe, sort of thing.

No. That sounds even weirder.

Oh well. You're all used to me by now!

Sorry!

2008-10-14T09:44:00.000-07:00

the last was so long. I was working through some ideas that have been swimming in my head a long time!

The problem with problems...

2008-10-14T08:34:00.000-07:00

One of the things I've noticed, from traveling around to lots of places, and working in lots of different institutions, large and small, is that the problems are always the same. And no one seems to know what to do about them!

So, for example, I had lunch today with a long-time NRAO staffer. I got him talking about what it's like to work here, and he immediately began talking about the things NRAO did NOT have: not enough staff, not enough time, not enough money. And then a few things he had too much of: too much management, making too much money, too many assignments and things to do to ever get them all done with the available manpower, and too many meetings.

So I asked him what he could do about it. After a few moments of looking at me blankly, he said he'd hire more staff. Which is jumping into the middle of the problem, instead of beginning at the beginning. There are an entire host of reasons why you can't start there (especially as random staffer). But instead of saying 'that's not a good starting point', he says, 'so I can't do anything'.

So then I asked him about the particular project that I'll be working on. His take is that 'they don't know what they are doing'. 'They' have spent a lot of man-hours, a lot of money, and a lot of years, developing a product that doesn't meet specs.

So I asked him about his project. He doesn't have enough funding, help, space or time to do it right. And that's the fault of a) management, b) the NSF, and c) Charlottesville (i.e. upper, upper management), in that order.

An interesting set of contrasts there, but a common mindset. Other people's problems are their problems, but his problems are other people's problems.

But here's what I see, at first blush. I see 70, give or take, really, REALLY smart people who are excited about two brand-new, enormous projects. Some things are going really well. The EVLA antenna upgrades, for example, and the new ALMA installation. Other things are not. The correlator is slipping a month per month, CASA is not as functional as it should be, no science is getting done (lots of technical work is, however). But the 'culture of insufficiency', and the entrenched working groups are making it hard for people to get a fresh perspective on what they are doing, and how best to get it done. Everyone is on the defensive, no one is sharing what they are doing, and no one is saying, 'How can I help?' or even, 'Look at you! You go, grrl!' or even, 'It's better than it was yesterday! Nice work!'

Consider the CASA problem. This is new software for the new instruments. But it also works with the old instruments. So, you might think that a smart thing to do would be to get everyone here using CASA to do everything they are doing now (at least, everything that CASA can do already...). No better way to improve the software than to get a focus group of knowledgeable users using it every day, right? No. People who work on CASA work on CASA, but don't use it. People who work on other things use the old software, and complain that CASA doesn't do what they want, the way they want. NO ONE is actually using the new software. In a matter of months, it needs to be up and running and ready to handle the vast new data sets coming in from the new instruments. OMG. Can we get some help here?!

And I contrast this with my home department, where a solid core of us are always working together on various projects; where people jump in and say 'how can I help?' practically every day; where conversations in the hallway are filled with excitement and energy about something new someone's going to try. There's a sense of bringing a problem before the group to try to actually make progress toward solving it. The culture of the department is the culture of people who are fully occupied in a life they feel is important, valued, and worthwhile. It's a culture of people who respect each others' gifts, even when they vary wildly. And when someone comes up with a new idea, this core group of people say, 'Go for it!'. At least, that's how it looks to me... and that's how it looked to our program reviewers too, who were completely wowed by us.

So this is what I learned from Craig Hogan. If the culture is stuck and broken, then the functionality of the whole organism is stuck and broken. If people are are too defensive to talk to each other, if people aren't interested in what others are doing, or, alternatively, feel like their opinion doesn't matter, then all the problems seem insurmountable. But if everyone is chatting with everyone else, and helping out whenever they can, and openly expressing interest and respect, and asking questions instead of offering critiques, then it doesn't matter what other resources you do or don't have. The organism functions like a well-oiled machine. People get together to solve problems instead of getting together to whine about them.

This is where I'd suggest the staffer start. By simply walking up to someone, and asking what they are working on, and how it's going. And then listening. Finding something to praise that's going well, and asking what comes next. Setting ego aside long enough to offer help and praise, instead of suggestions or criticism. Assuming, from the get-go, that the person you are talking to has thought hard about what they are doing, and cares deeply about doing a good job. Finding a way to help, even if it means changing the way you are used to doing things. You know---being civil and engaged in the community. Taking responsibility for providing moral support to others who are struggling. It's a start on building a culture that focuses on solving problems, instead of on whining about them.

The weekend...

2008-10-13T07:01:00.000-07:00

Wind! Tornados! Eek! But all is well in my exact location.

But I now have furniture, thanks to the furniture rental place---$130/month for all the furniture I can use. Ah, a chair. Sitting is nice.

The farmer's market on Saturday morning supplied me with most of the veggies I'll eat this week. I found a local market that carries local produce (in season), and seems to raise their own cows and pigs (!), although I have to verify that---there are pictures of their county fair winners all over the walls. Socorro is not for those who prefer not to know where their meat comes from!

Yesterday, I signed up to help with the Obama campaign. They have early voting here in NM (a swing state), and mostly, I'll be knocking on doors, making sure people have their sample ballots, and know where (and when) to vote. There's a meeting this afternoon to organize us for the big push to election day. The woman at the office said, 'If we do our job right, election day will be boring, because everyone will have already voted.' It's exciting to be in a state where the outcome of the election is uncertain!

My head... it's on fire!

2008-10-10T07:36:00.000-07:00

Wow! Good morning! That's every reason to come to Socorro, right there.

I finally caught the elusive burrito lady. And, unlike the last time I was here, I was not too shy to ask questions!

She tries to get here around 8 am, so she can catch the VLA shift change before the van heads up the mountain. Looks like I'm coming to work at 8 from now on. That's easy, because I won't have to make breakfast before I leave the house!

She sells 5 kinds of burritos out of her cooler---so I could get a different one every day of the week! Two kinds of potato burritos, a bean burrito, a meat and bean burrito, and, of course, the world-famous breakfast burrito. Given that the breakfast burrito sets your head on fire, I can't wait to try the others!

This is going to break the budget---$2.50 per burrito. That's $12.50/week, or $50/month. I'll have to economize on the electric bill. ; )

Someone else came up during our chat, so on Monday, I'll get her name, and find out if she runs a restaurant in town.

Heaven is setting your head on fire first thing in the morning, when the air is so cool you've got your long sleeves and jeans on.

Just outside

2008-10-09T09:01:00.000-07:00

Just outside my cubicle is one of the many coffee centers in the
building!

The cubicle

2008-10-09T09:00:00.001-07:00

I have the desk by the window. At the moment, no one is at the other
desk.

The SOC

2008-10-09T08:59:00.001-07:00

Formerly known as the AOC... In any event, the building where I'm
working! Can I even begin to convey the excitement of working in a building that actually says 'National Science Foundation' on the outside?! I know the NSF has its bureaucratic issues, and sometimes it's hard to access them. But where would we be as a nation without the NSF? I mean, think about it. What a brilliant thing for a nation to do. To decide that knowing about the Universe is SO important that we'll pool our dollars, start a foundation, and then spend decades paying scientists to ask questions, seek answers, look at stuff and figure stuff out. Eventually, they come up with bio-markers that make it possible to fight disease. They discover an understanding of quarks and the fundamental structure of matter. They invent new ways of thinking, and new ways of knowing, and new ways of asking questions.

In this building, some people are trying to understand about outflows from black holes, and some are trying to understand about galaxy formation, and some are trying to understand about how stars are born. Some are 'just' trying to figure out how to make a better interferometer. And, yes, some of us even work really hard to try to understand the shaping mechanisms of dying stars. It's the little pieces that make up the big pieces that make up the sum total of human knowledge. This knowledge is a gift from our forebears, but it comes with an obligation---to add to this total, and to pass it on to the next generation, better than when we received it. That means BOTH doing the research, and telling about it. This is the whole point of having research institutions, teaching institutions, schools AND museums. To make sure that the knowledge gets passed, intact, down the line. It's redundant, with many ways of accomplishing the same goal. But it's not wasted effort. It just means that no one failure will destroy the whole system.

I don't think I ever saw that really, really big picture before. Or got the visceral sense of holding this gift in my hands, with an obligation to care for it, add to it, and pay it forward.

Take that, John McCain. Here, in this building, the American people have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on what you would probably call a 'radio' that makes pictures of the sky, for planetariums to show with an 'overhead projector'. There is no utility here---astronomy is a fundamentally un-useful thing to do. Paradoxically, it's also one of the most important things we do, as human beings. It fulfills a fundamental obligation that makes us, us.

Hovenweep 10

2008-10-08T13:16:00.001-07:00

From the rim of this canyon, you hear something totally odd. Down in the canyon, there are cottonwood trees. So layered on top of the sound of wind in the desert is the sound of wind in the trees. It's magnificent.