Girlfriends are like house plants: you can leave them alone, but even house plants need water sometimes.

"In graduate classes you can just give the students the book and the homework and let them teach each other. I wish I could get my undergrads to do that."

I did something right today! I've been having issues understanding random processes, and with the math for my coherence class in general. On Monday I took a shot at the homework and got maybe two thirds of it shakily done. So this morning I got out the textbook (a textbook! What luxury!) and highlighted enough of the chapter we're covering that you'd think they just screwed up and used yellow paper. This afternoon I took my homework (which I considered a draft, fully intending to rewrite it later) and my copy of the coherence theory yellow pages to office hours to talk about what was going on. It turned out not to be as bad as I thought.
I'd solved one problem with a backwards method, which I fixed. I clarified the difference between time-average and ensemble average. I listened to a discussion of the one problem I hadn't done yet (the problem statement had a piece of information I didn't understand, and the solution turned out to hinge on it). Then I kicked the shit out of a problem I thought I'd done wrong. I wound up giving a mini-lecture on how I interpreted the Poisson distribution to apply and translated an ensemble average into something that makes physical sense. Then we got to the part where I thought I was wrong, and it turned out to be a sign error. Damn, I'm good.
Then I wrote up this little story for a class I'm in on college teaching, and related it to the readings for this week. In this class, since they are so big on active learning, they love it when you relate the readings to your own experiences. I have been thinking - other disciplines expect students to read before coming to class. Engineers give lectures that are basically what the students would be reading if they were reading before class. Why don't we require them to do the reading, and then just have discussions of example problems during class time? We could directly discuss the thinking process of problem solving. We could still lecture about concepts that need clarification, but we wouldn't have to lecture about everything. Maybe we are concerned that the homework plus the reading will take too much time, but: (a) people in other disciplines already do it, and (b) if we teach this way the homework will be easier because they'll have practiced. I am serious, folks. I am going to try this.

The Elements of Style

I think I'm going to change my haircut. I've had the same "long in front, short in back" style for a few years now, I think. I love it, but it's got a few problems. First, it takes time to make the hair stand up in the back, and I am very busy this semester. Yes, I am seriously considering sacrificing style for an extra 10 minutes in the morning. Very, very busy. Second, it's winter, and if I have a hairstyle that depends so heavily on standing up for its stylishness, hats are right out, and hoods are contraindicated except in extreme circumstances.
I fondly refer to my current haircut as a reverse mullet. It's cooler than that makes it sound, though, because it has a lot of razory spikiness built in. I hope to maintain the razor coolness, but move closer to a short-all-over strategy so I have an easier time wearing it. Maybe when I have fewer classes I'll grow out the front again. Why does anyone ever grow out the back of their hair? If anyone knows, please explain.

We got to carry each other, carry each other

Jack has been playing the same "best of U2" CD in for the past few weeks of jiujitsu. In each class we hear it at least three times. That makes six times per week. If I assume it's been going on for three weeks (I suspect it's more, but I am rounding down), that's 18 times in a row that we've heard the same CD. I like U2 too, but damn. Maybe I ought to bring Jack a mix. He'd probably be into some of that Brazilian stuff all the cool kids like. But would it be weird to Paulo, suddenly hearing a bunch of what are basically golden oldies to him?

Jesus Ray we got the chessboard out but you playin' Whac-A-Mole

Jesus Ray we got the tortas out but you makin' Qdoba

Jesus Ray we got the 客家豆腐 out but you eatin' fried rice

Jesus Ray we got our tuxes out but you wearin' a shirt with a name tag

gross.

In his most recent advice article, Cary Tennis suggested that a man should leave his cheating, unrepentant wife. So far, so good. But then he said the guy should get in touch with some fathers' rights groups for support. Uh. Those are the guys who think domestic violence happens as often against men as it does against women, right? The guys who think a man shouldn't have to pay child support unless he gets to see the kids, even if there are good reasons not to let him? These guys think women are always lying: at home about whether they're on the pill or not, and in court about whether their husbands were abusive. You recommend a guy get over his irresponsible wife by taking up hating women as a hobby? Bad form, Cary.

Also, I'm in a class with a discussion board, and one of the ongoing assignments is to post about the weekly readings. People often post about themselves and how the readings relate to their lives or past work or whatever. But one response was kind of weirdly defensive. It seemed like, confronted with scholarly works that challenge previous experience, this person's response to suggestions for improvement to existing methods was "but that's harrrrd" and the response to a description of various levels of cognitive development was "did you just call me dumb?"

I met S. this weekend, who seems cool. He's in a local band called Dress Code and teaches in the Anthropology department. I am going to try to go to the next Dress Code show. As one might expect, there is a dress code - some sort of preference exists for people wearing a dress. The band will also wear a dress. That's just this show, though - other shows' dress codes did not involve dresses.

为什么学中文？ 因 为 我 想 交 朋 友。

Today I tried ordering food in Chinese for the first time. I hadn't tried it yet because I am shy about speaking Chinese with strangers - I feel like I am wasting their time. But today I did, and it turned out to be kind of an adventure.

I went to the Chinese place across the street from my office and asked for some dumplings, and the owner was only a little surprised - I think I have probably said "xiexie" to him before or something.

While I'm eating my dumplings, a white guy comes in and has a conversation in Chinese with the owner, who tells him he has a new dish that's delicious, and also that there's another white person who can speak Chinese here (that's me). So I invite the guy to sit with me.

We had a nice conversation about how he has been to a lot of different countries, I should go to China, and the internet is a series of tubes. So I made a new friend using Chinese! Awesome!

fighting crime

Batman had it pretty good, overall.

shame

I have some friends who are lawyers. Sometimes when they talk about the situations they encounter in their jobs, I am overwhelmed by what happens in the world. One friend's job involves going to public hearings about the construction of a Hindu temple near town, to make sure none of the locals violates our state's religious freedom laws by saying something stupid like "well, this here's a Christian community." That sentiment is obviously still in their hearts, but instead the discussions center on their made-up concerns with the plan: drainage, irrigation, parking, anything they can think of to slow down the approval of a nice temple that will probably even bring them some business.

Another one who I met recently works on cases of abused and neglected children. Apparently prosecutors with that job are 3 or 4 times more likely to be [assaulted? killed?] than average people. I wonder if it's because people who abuse children just choose the children because they're easy targets, but really could mistreat anybody. Maybe the way they communicate with people is just broken. I feel sick about how much that dynamic is based on power, and how easy it is for a person to be trapped and powerless.

I am ashamed of humanity's sexism, bigotry, poverty and cruelty. Even pretty tame examples from our apple-pie corner of the world bring up all kinds of shock and anger and shame. I don't know what to do. Unfortunately, all I know to do with evil people is actual fighting, which isn't useful. It would be enough to drive me to violence, though, if only that would help.

Edit: I wrote this a long, long time ago and never published it. Now it's a little less fresh, and I'm ok with seeing it on the internet.

I love to eat

Wikipedia has a whole section about Chinese vegetables. I spent a lot of time at work last week reading about hollow vegetable and Chinese broccoli. It's exciting to me, because I love food. Bdon & I went to a new grocery store today and found some tiny, tiny all-green bok choy. They were delicious! You could put the whole thing in your mouth at once!

When I go to my parents' house for vacation, I need to remember to bring some things along that I don't want to look for or go without while I'm there. For instance, my brothers and I have a secret plan that will require some sweet rice flour. I also want to bring my yoga mat, in hopes that it'll be a portable way to keep working out regularly. And I should probably bring along some Chinese to review - maybe these children's books that I have. They look fun.

meditation, meditation. me di ta tion. meditation.

We possitas haven't been doing a lot of yoga lately, but I think that is about to change. I'm excited - back in the summer we went every week and I really liked it. But recently we've been going to this tea ceremony at the Japan House instead, and I don't have time for both. I've decided I prefer yoga.

I've also been practicing more taiji. Last night I didn't feel sleepy right away so I did a tiny bit of sitting meditation before bed. It helps a lot. I haven't had trouble sleeping in at least a year - maybe I need to reexamine some things about my schedule. But more taiji is good, whatever my reasoning. Maybe I can get into a morning taiji / evening yoga (or vice versa) routine.

adventures are so six months ago

I feel like there are a lot of individual things going on with a lot of individual friends, and it all adds up to a general malaise. Not all of it is bad: D. is graduating and making awesome plans. Bdon has the kind of job that will help him get into grad school in the field it seems like he wants to be in (but does he want to be in it? His usual enthusiasm is MIA). Some of us have genuinely good things going on: F. is going to graduate and I think his plans are to stay local for grad school. I've been getting a lot done on my own research lately. But Matt seems generally discontented, the psych crew is always busy and they all have the same long face, and Bdon also has plenty of things to get him down. I'm concerned. I don't know how to cheer up people who don't have time to cheer up. Or maybe this is a feeling only I have, and it just makes me interpret other changes in a different way.

A completely separate thought: I like it when my man shows off for me! Not obvious things like muscle-flexing (though that's fine too), but little stuff. Like thoughtfully shaving before we are going to spend time together. Or a little butt shake in my direction. Maybe wearing a nice shirt and asking what I think of it (while making muscles?) when he already knows I dig it. These are things that girls know to do, because in a way we're more used to being pretty, having people look at us. I am glad when guys catch on, though! Keep the admiration channels open.

no time for losers

I was great at bjj today. We worked on open guard, which I have been trying to pay more attention to. I was glad because I love to play guard in general, and I feel like I have a lot more freedom when I can switch between closed and open. A push is no good without a pull, that kind of thing. This all started a while ago when everyone was doing koala guard for a month straight. Today it was butterfly. I feel like I am starting to understand how to use my feet as hooks to throw guys around. It's weird - on Tuesday I felt all clumsy, couldn't make anything work, and today I'm a genius of balance. I am having jiujitsu mood swings.

Last night at about midnight F. and Bdon and G. and I all decided to make a pie. It was delicious, but maybe midnight pie is not such a good idea - when it was done, I just ate my slice and went straight home to sleep. Pie time should be more social.

I feel like I will be able to get a lot done this week because I am on break from class, but I think my expectations are getting kind of unrealistic. Time seems to go faster than it did back in the day. What used to be "a whole hour!" has turned into "only an hour?" somehow.

do you like me? check yes or no

How do you make blog-friends with somebody? There's a kind of cool guy in a terrible discussion on another blog, and I would like to make friends. Then I could talk to him separately from all these disgusting, rude, sexist people.

Holy cow democrats win

I'm relieved and optimistic! I want to send presents to Nancy Pelosi.

The death of suspense

TV series these days seem to think that "we're not going to tell you what's going on until next week" is the same as suspense. That just telling a weak story more slowly makes it more interesting. That's bullshit.

on gifts

Right now I'm doing all my mental Christmas shopping, deciding what to give to my friends (the family is mostly done). I love giving presents, but doing it right takes a lot of work.

If you don't know what someone wants, you get them a gift card. If have a wish list or something, you get them something from that. But if you are a gift-giving ninja, you find something that would have been on their wish list, if only they'd known it exists. Those are the best presents - things people didn't even know they wanted, but actually can't live without. Of course you have to know them pretty well for that. And you have to think about it a lot, which is what I've been doing this week.

untouchable for life

Yesterday at bjj, Jack was having us do a lot of one-move drills - "do kimuras continuously for a minute," for instance. A. had just returned from France, and Jack kept coming around and picking on her in his coachy way: "Pick it up, A.! Just because you've been in France for a month doesn't mean you get to slack off!" I speculated that maybe there was a special A.-only tournament somewhere that Jack wanted her to train for. Then apparently I got invited to the super secret tournament, because it was all, "Lookin' good, Kay See (that is how Jack says KC - with a lot of separation between the letters)! What, are you tired already? Keep moving, girl!" Nobody but us gets to go to the secret tournament, I guess. It was funny, but maybe you had to be there.

Oh! And I learned some new moves recently, I guess, because I surprised A. a couple of times with some tricks I learned while she was gone. Sometimes you don't feel like you've learned anything new, because everyone else has been improving too. Then someone goes on vacation, and when they get back you sweep them a couple times. Then they catch on and you don't have any tricks until they leave town again.

I was feling pretty good when I came home from practice, and maybe that contributed to the dream I had after I made a sandwich (grilled avocado, tomato, and cheese is the best) and went to sleep. Basically what happened is that I turned into a very happy superhero.

First, some guy I know - maybe it was R. - found a kind of plant in California. If you ate it, you became immortal. So a placeholder group of friends and I all went to California to eat it in this forest. It was no lie - not like we tested it by trying to die, but you definitely felt different after eating the plant. I was bursting with energy, so I jumped into the air in a particular way and discovered that the plant could also make you fly. It felt a lot like swimming, but faster. I even dunked some guys.

A girl we knew was being coerced into marrying an evil guy - he wanted her money I guess. She'd escaped, but for some reason I don't actually understand he'd captured a different girl and was going to have her stand in for the first girl at the wedding ceremony. Then somehow he would be married to the girl who wasn't there. I talked to some people in the wedding party about it, and they agreed - I specifically remember saying to one guy, "You're a jerk, but you're not evil." He was convinced by that and helped us break up the party. A chase scene involving some catering followed. In particular a taco buffet was adversely affected by the chase.

Resting in a water garden after having saved the day, we saw a woman in a wedding dress start singing and walk into the water. It was a ceremony that belonged to a culture that my dream had completely invented. A lot of other women who were involved in her wedding all got in the water and sang together. The ritual was intended just to bless the wedding, but the feeling in my dream was that their singing had also consecrated us, the immortality plant, the water, and our future of immortality.

I told T. about this dream and she asked me to send her some of whatever I'd been drinking. Avocado sandwiches? BJJ? I don't know if it's repeatable. But I felt awesome all morning.

fight back to school

On Friday I dropped one of my classes. It was right before the midterm, and the TA seemed perplexed by that - most people take the midterm and then drop if they do badly. But I was less concerned with my grade than with the time the class was consuming. I was turning in 20 pages of homework weekly and studying extra to make up for confused presentation in lecture. It wasn't even thoughtful homework, it was usually 6 versions of almost the same number-crunching problem. I wanted the credits so I could be done taking classes sooner (I plan to finish the credit requirements next year), but the trade-off with research time was too steep. Being done with classes doesn't help me if I haven't got any research done. I feel like dropping this class has freed up at least 10 or 15 hours per week, and just yesterday I made some science progress. Problem solved!

I feel a little bad that I didn't sit the TA down and explain why I was dropping. I really felt like the class was being run into the ground, and that was what made me quit. I was getting a good grade in the class, participated in lectures, studied for the midterm I didn't even take, and I think those things would have made my opinion carry a little more weight. The thing is, when midterm evaluations came back pretty negative, this TA bitched out the class at the next lecture, in the "if you don't like how I teach you should drop" style. There's some truth to that, but if everyone in the class thinks you teach badly, there's probably something to it and you shouldn't write them off as whiners who should drop the class. That's bad form. So I felt like I could possibly have changed the class for the better (as sort of a public service) by explaining why I was quitting, but I didn't want to get into it with somebody who takes criticism so badly.

I'm looking forward to bjj today. I should learn Perl so I can write a script that includes that line in everything I post on a Tuesday or Saturday. A. might even be back today. I hope she had fun in France.

为我弟弟干杯

Internet twiddling led me to this entertaining article about the history of drinking in China. The best part is this:

Writers also set out rules in their essays which were to be followed when drinking alcohol.

For example, one's drinking companions should be "elegant, unrestrained, forthright, understanding, old friends or beautiful". The best places for drinking should be "in front of flowers, in the bamboo forest, in a high pavilion, in a boat, in a peaceful villa, along a zig-zag stream or by a lotus pool".

And the best time for drinking should be "spring, a time when flowers are blooming, or in cool autumn, or after snow, or on rainy days or on nights with a crescent moon".

我第一弟弟学习中文

My brother is learning Mandarin too now. Awesome! We can now tell secrets at family gatherings. Though he probably doesn't know very much yet - I bet most of the secrets will be "Uncle so-and-so is very tall." "Does he have a dog?" "No, he doesn't have a dog. Aunt such-and-such has a dog."

Oh man, I have to look up how to say aunt and uncle again. I forget words about as fast as I learn them.

Goshin jitsu is today. Joker posted on the GJ message board, speculating about whether MMA-type training is the same as hazing, along with a scanned-in copy of an article that made me want to puke. He was wondering whether all that work helps these guys somehow, or if he's actually just a big fat bully. I think whether he's a bully or not is in his head, and depends on his intentions - we're all getting something out of it, though, so if he intends to be a bully and make us unjustifiabley miserable maybe he should step it up.

There's some validity in the idea that martial arts training is kind of a rite of passage, though. It's overwhelmingly full of young men who probably find confidence in their own strength through testing it, and social acceptance in a group of other men who are doing the same thing. I admit that I also want to be liked, especially by people who are better at martial arts than me.

As for women like me.... well, there's no reason we can't want those things. Our priorities are just skewed from all the women who look for validation from other women by worrying together about their weight & looks or doing yoga together or something. Not that I don't dig yoga, it's just that in the US it's a very female activity and there's certain kinds of lady activities that surround that.

I was kind of down yesterday because I feel like everybody else improves faster at bjj than I do. Today I'm not down, I just guess I should work harder & smarter. If only I were smart!

Energy levels, excited states

I'm taking three classes this semester (3rd semester Chinese, an optics lab, and a communications signal processing course). That adds up to 12 hours, as the university counts it. I'm a 4th-year grad student, and my courseload would count as full-time for an undergrad! Is this stupid? Yes.

I do have a good reason (for the two non-Chinese classes): if I take 7 hours of applicable class per semester, I'll be done with classes after next fall. That's incentive, right there. I do not have a good reason for taking Chinese - I mean, it's useful, tons of people speak it in my department, I do think it would be fun to visit China, etc etc. But those aren't reasons on the same level as "it counts towards my degree" is a reason.

Taking this many classes, getting back into taiji, keeping up with BJJ/JKD, and hitting Goshin Jitsu once a week (I want to work on my stand-up fighting) makes me feel like I never have any down time. I never had any before, but that was because I spent a lot of time being social - White Horse Thursdays, pool at Crane Alley after BJJ Tuesday nights, lots of Settlers of Catan... I filled that time up. Now I have to empty that time out again, so I can spend it on school. It's hard saying "no, I can't go out" when I'm not used to it. I don't doubt I can make it, but it demands a slightly harder, more serious side of LV.

Oh! Also I'm volunteering (mostly - they feed us sometimes and I get a little money) as a graduate mentor for an undergraduate women engineers' mentoring & professional development class. I get to skip all the boring resume-writing and professional developing, and take ladies on tours of my lab, sing karaoke with them, introduce them to professional types that I know, and other fun big sister things. Awesome!

rock facts rock facts rock facts

I want to go to Ladies Rock Camp. There's one in Portland and one in NYC, and both are fundraisers for local Girls Rock camps. I'm excited about it, because I like to rock but I'm not very good at it, and this is a chance to practice rocking with some ladies that won't make too much fun of my problems, since we're all supposed to be learning.

I also like the idea of giving money to rock camps for girls, because more girl rockers = more rockers = more good bands.

heaven on wheels

My bike's rolling again after about a month of exchanging grease for dust in the extra bedroom. I hadn't checked the bottom bracket for a while, and suddenly it was creaky and wobbly. Busy and lazy as I am, I tried to take it to the bike shop to get it fixed, but the bike guy told me to do it myself (you have to know this bike guy for that to make sense).

The reason I didn't ride my bike for such a long time is that it's unlucky. Right before I started having these problems, somebody kicked and bent my back tire. As soon as that was fixed I noticed the bottom bracket problem. I wanted to buy a sealed bottom bracket to replace it, but even that took three trips to the bike shop. It went like this:

"I want a sealed bottom bracket."
"Do you know what size you need? Bring in the old part so we can tell."
"I know what kind of bike I have. Does that help?"
"No."

(later)

"I want a sealed bottom bracket. Here's the old one."
"Do you know what size you need?"
"Uh... last time I was here, you asked to see the old part so you could tell what size I need."
"No, we actually have to measure the shell on your frame."
"I know what kind of bike I have. Does that help?"
"Oh, ok. It's probably this one."

(later)

I'm at home putting my bike back together, and (oh no!) the new part doesn't fit. Thing is, there's two sizes of these, a big size and a smaller size. They are supposed to have sold me the smaller size, yet this one is too big. What's going on? I measure my bike and it's 68 mm. I put the part together outside my bike and measure it; it's 73 mm, but it's marked 68. Huh? I look closer. The cartridge itself is marked 68 mm, but there's a collar that holds it still on the other end, and that's marked 73. Back to the bike shop. They are very speedy, for once, and immediately give me the right piece. Awesome! So today I get to bike to work.

j-j-johnny and me

When I lived in Royal Oak, before my youngest brother was born, I went to preschool and kindergarten with A., who was my very best friend. We moved away when I was six, but A. and I kept in touch for a surprisingly long time - longer, I think, than we were actually in-person friends.

When I visited her for the last time, I must have been 13 or so. We didn't have a lot in common anymore - I remember watching Spaceballs and playing a lot of Sorry!. She played a tape for me ("She Don't Use Jelly") that I didn't really get into, and after that we didn't talk much anymore.

These days I realize she was a lot cooler than I was back then, all listening to the Flaming Lips and watching funny grown-up movies. I wonder what she did with herself after that.

yeah, some people want to steal her heart

Globe-trotting!

Everybody's friend Ryan returned from his time in Kazakhstan for the Peace Corps recently, and a commemorative party was held this weekend. I drove with T. and Bdon to Chicago, spent Friday night and Saturday morning gently chilling, and bought a very sexy new shirt before the real party began.

Swashbuckling!

After a round of vodka shots accompanied by a horse sausage chaser, the rowdiness of the party shot up precipitously. The guest of honor got it into his head to play a game of baseball. Lacking a bat and a ball, we were forced to use an umbrella and hamburger buns. Similarly, lacking space in Neal's backyard, a baseball contingent trekked to the boulevard part of Logan Boulevard. (This isn't as dangerous as it sounds - Logan is divided into three parts, not two: a four-lane, two-way center road with smaller one-way streets on each side. So the boulevard was at the side of the main road.) Since the hamburger buns smashed in midair whenever we hit them, there wasn't really a way to catch the ball or tag anyone out, and we pretty much had to tackle the runner once they hit the bun. The game quickly degenerated into some friendly grappling between Ryan and me, since he'd been asking me a bit about bjj earlier. Bystanders helpfully removed our glasses, both Ryan's shoes and one of mine. (Maybe they were afraid we'd kick each other?) Not long after that, we returned to the main party at Neal's place, me with one dirty sock and one clean sock, Ryan with grass prints all over himself.

Romance!

Back at Neal's place, the fact that J. and T. (who dated each other a long time ago) had each brought a relatively new significant other led to some entertaining storytelling. Everyone had an embarrassing story from J. or T.'s younger, less dignified days. I don't know if J. and T. enjoyed it, but everyone else had a great time. J. and T. sure did a lot of cutely dumb things back in the day.

Adventure!

Everyone at the party liked my new shirt, and it was generally agreed that I can do a little bit of style. So Ryan asked me to go shopping with him Sunday with the goal of helping him become more dashing. Shirts were found without too much trouble, and then we passed Myopic Books, where I picked up One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera. The whole outing was a good time, punctuated by us periodically getting slightly lost. That was fine, though - it just led to extra car time listening to some great albums I hadn't heard in a while. On the way to drop Ryan back off at Jake's place, we passed a coffee house that looked delicious even from the outside - after a hot afternoon of walking around, lemonade was impossible to pass up. I had intended to go home after that, but the J Team and T. wanted to have dinner in Chinatown and I was forced to change my mind. Another slightly-lost episode and a theory about Built to Spill later, we were having bubble tea and waiting for a table with them. Dinner was at Lao Si Chuan, apparently widely known as one of the better Chinese places in town. Delicious! Everyone went to Jake's place for a little while, and then I had a long and exhausting drive home.

when my mind is uncertain my body decides

Yesterday, after a lazy morning and a little bit of work, I met up with B. for a bit of BJJ. He'd missed class Tuesday, so I showed him the two new mount escapes from that practice. Truthfully, I can't get them to work very well, or very consistently. However, having four options for escaping mount instead of two makes my game immensely better even though I am not great at many of them. It makes it easier to keep my opponent from settling down and starting to try submissions. Also, the tiniest details can change how really basic things feel: I concentrated on not lying flat on my back when on the bottom in cross-side, and I was a lot more successful.

After a satisfying and educational hour of jiujitsu and a stint at taiji club, the posse hit one of Champaign's worst bars, the White Horse, to see some possitos play in Champaign's hottest new band, Porn Chowder.



These dudes are going to play at my birthday party. It's going to be awesome.

not good at bjj practice yesterday

Some days, everything you try works. Other days, you try everything and nothing works.

I learned a couple of things, I just felt like I had two left hands the whole time.

Edit: If I let this bother me, does it mean I don't have a good attitude? Eh, everybody gets frustrated. But not everybody drills the next day.

little vicious goes to goshin jitsu

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preventive care

I sprain my ankles pretty frequently (once or twice a year). I just did it again. This is a link to remind me to do exercises for them.

winners get sandwiches

Ever since Brandon & I decided we'd go to that jiujitsu tournament, people at our school have been saying, "You guys are going to tear it up." I'd never heard that expression before, so my mind would immediately fill with the same kind of images that result from hearing about actors chewing the scenery. I had trouble not laughing.

It was a good prediction, though - I won my three-woman division, though I doubt I'd have done as well in the much larger men's lightweight bracket. There was a lot of variety in the matches I had - my two opponents were very cool and very different from each other.

My first and third matches were against J., a woman who was about my size and had killer takedowns. I spent some time trying to get the takedown myself, but she up and threw me, surprising me both times. I always landed with guard, though, and in the first match this led straight to a cross-collar choke. In the third (my second with her), I caught her with a sweep and the match ended (much later than the first one) when I managed a sleeve choke from mount.

My second match was with H., a woman who was much bigger than me - she was the only person in her weight class, so she got mixed in with mine. I was a little concerned about that at first, since size really is an advantage, and she was 1-and-1 with the first girl. But this time I got the takedown, and she kept giving me chances to go to her back. It seemed like her thoughts were, "She's got a better position, I have to get away," and getting away meant turning her back. So I went to the back and she squirmed partly out of it, but when she was on her side I hit an arm bar. I didn't get it very tight at first, and she fought it and rolled us both over, but eventually tapped. At first I didn't hear her (maybe because of the upside-downyness), and I felt pretty bad about that, but she turned out to be OK.

I didn't realize it would make such a big difference, but having coaches really changes the way the game is played. At least two or three times in this whole thing, one of Dan or Mike or Jack pointed out an opportunity I didn't see, or didn't initially think I could make. I'd try it, and it would work, and that would really change the match. Those guys are excellent.

H. was actually from the school my brothers are about to start going to. I met a couple of the girls from Michigan, and they were great. I hope I get to visit them when I'm up there in a couple of weeks.

Oh! And my parents came to see the tournament. I sat with them for a while at the beginning, and they asked things like, "Why is that guy upside down?" But they saw a day-long tournament's worth of matches, I sat with them and helped explain what was up for a while, and by the end they were cheering: "Squish him, B!" My dad even noticed the Jiujitsu Faces on people and asked about it (I'm glad I'm not the only one). After my bracket was all done, we hit a grocery store and made a huge sub sandwich to pass around. Everybody loved it. All those macho guys I go to school with wish their moms would come watch them.

It was funny when Jack met my mom, though. He started saying, "OK, don't freak out, KC's not going to get hurt..." and my mom was all, "Are you kidding? Do you think I don't know this chick?" And I was in the middle, thinking "Ja-ack, you're embarrassing me!"

on looks

Last night I read this post at Feministe, which is commentary about another post at Creek Running North. It's about something that has always felt wrong to me about what the internets call "fat acceptance": can't we admit that sometimes being really fat is not good while still refusing to blame fat people for what might actually be a social problem? (If you want to hear about how social structures can make people fat, read those posts - though they don't mention having a sit-down job with long hours, and they should.)

But that whole conversation isn't what I'm thinking about - I finished thinking about it last night. This morning I put on a shirt that says "this is what a feminist looks like" and some sexy pants. Then I thought, "Is it OK to be feminist and want people to like how my butt looks?" Then I thought, "That's a stupid question. Of course it is."

The conflict stems from a common reaction to an idea that is actually not so bad. People start from "patriarchal beauty standards are screwed up and unhealthy, and the amount of pressure there is on women to look a certain way is definitely bad." That's completely fine. But then they conclude: "we should never think that some people look better than others." That's unrealistic and, I think, also bad.

People have eyes, and they look at each other. Eyes are just tools - they're not necessarily Tools Of The Patriarchy. Relationships are based partially on sexual attraction, which is based partially on looks. Denying that will just lead to guilt and conflictedness about making visual judgements. But it's possible to make visual judgements that don't reinforce unhealthy ideas of beauty. Just like (going back to how I got on this topic) how it's possible to admit that sometimes fatness is bad without blaming, discriminating against, or being hurtful to the fat people themselves.

time to branch out, BJJ anthropology

I've been saying for a while that I need to start rolling with more & different people in jiujitsu. I'm not going to abandon the regulars - there's just a lot I could learn from certain people I don't often work with. The thing is, I'm shy (especially around people that are better than me at something). And the phenomenon that I call Jiujitsu Face doesn't help.

See, when people are rolling, they try to be relaxed so they don't tire themselves out, and they're usually thinking hard and paying close attention to what's going on. They may also be trying to look cool. This leads to Jiujitsu Face: the characteristic face a person makes during a match. People with Jiujitsu Face often make faces that look disappointed, bored, concerned, or very mildly amused.

Sometimes they continue making their Jiujitsu Face off the mat. Then how do I tell if they're actually disappointed or bored, or if they just made that face so long it got stuck that way? Should I be taking this disappointed, bored, concerned person away from the object of his disappointment? Is what seems to me an enjoyable match during open mat really an imposition?

Of course it's not. Hardly anybody is ever annoyed because somebody wants to roll with them. That's why they're still hanging around during open mat. They'd just leave if they weren't interested in doing any more work. But Jiujitsu Face - even though I have one of my own - fools me into being a little less outgoing. Weird.

expensive things I am not going to buy (at least not now)

1. Important, classic book on electromagnetics. (J. A. Stratton, Electromagnetic Theory, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1941.)
2. Sexy gray sequined pants from The Limited. (2a. Pants in general.)
3. Exciting moonstone bracelet from hippy-dippy fair trade store.
4. As much sushi as usual.
5. New glasses.
   

I'm kind of pouty about this. It's not like my life is really luxurious, but I am weak-willed and like to be smart, pretty, and well-fed.

it just continues on that way

From fmhLisa, posting in Hugo Schwyzer's blog (I rarely agree with the guy, and he often assumes that everyone else's experience has the same meaning as his, but the writing is thoughtful at least):

I changed my name when I married at the ripe-old age of nineteen. But I don't think I'd do so now.

I'm still married to the same lovely man, and much much more committed to him now, after thirteen years and three children.

I'm so glad I married him (even so young) but knowing what I do now, I wouldn't advise nineteen-year-old me to change the name.

Basically, I didn't want to hurt his feelings, I didn't want to cause a stir within my family, I was only just deciding that I was a feminist at all. But I do feel like I lost something of myself, gave up my own identity, when he was not expected to, nor did he even understand the sacrifice. And it just continues on that way, women giving up stuff and men not noticing until you beat them about the heads with it.

I feel pretty lucky that I am able to refuse to just give things up like this. It is an important point, though, and just because I'm avoiding it in most areas of my life doesn't mean everyone else is as privileged as me. I'll come back to this later.

Edit: originally I said that Amanda at Pandagon had posted that, and it didn't sound right then either. But I was confused by the order of comments & the names of their authors. Sorry, all y'all.

irrepressible

Excitement: B. & I are going to compete in a BJJ tournament in June. We're trying to get F. to compete too, but right now he's saying he just wants to come watch us. I'm a little concerned about that - F. isn't the kind of guy to skip a chance to meet & roll with new people just because there's a little pressure on. Why's he so reticent now? We've gotta get that guy's confidence up.

In the way of preparation for this advenure, the three of us have changed the way we do matches. Normally we start from knees and go until somebody gets tapped out, and don't really keep score. (This is partly because it's often just me and B., and it doesn't make sense to put a time limit on your matches when there's only two of you.) Yesterday we switched it up, with five-minute matches starting from standing, and it forced me to play a lot differently. I'm not strong and big, so I often am not very aggressive in matches, but I found I didn't have so much time for that. Also my takedowns really suck. I learned a lot, though, and we're going to do it again today.

I'm so excited about BJJ. Anytime fighting comes up (and sometimes when it doesn't), sirens go off in my brain: "eeeeeee i get to do bjj this is so exciting!"

I think everyone else is tired of it.

post punk

My hair has faded to a minty, silvery blue-green (I've been swimming a lot). Some people say it looks "industrial." Maybe it looks a little verdigris-ish, but I was surprised by that.

Yesterday, a BJJ seminar. I learned a lot of great techniques. Also, the guy (visiting from Phoenix, originally from Brazil) talked hilariously about sex all the time. I liked that he swore a lot, though. It let me forgive a little bit of his interesting opinions about ladies.

plumb tuckered out

I swam for the first time in a month or so yesterday. It took a little of the fire out of my jiujitsu later in the day, but I am trying to swim more frequently so that doesn't happen. To that end, I planned on swimming today, but I couldn't make myself do it. I've got reasons - I didn't get a lot of sleep and wanted to go home and nap, I was hungry, my legs were sore . . . but I think all of those things would have been improved by a little time in the pool. Oh well. I'll work out on land tonight, test the water again tomorrow.

(I wrote my first lecture ever today! I think I should have taken maybe twice as long to give it - I definitely went too fast - but it was very informative anyway.)

Compliments

I was on the quad today, just minding my own business buying a delicious popsicle (paleta, actually), when some guys gave me these:


These days there is no such thing as me minding my own business. I mostly enjoy it - not many people go out of their way to say they disapprove of my [green] hair, but plenty of them tell me they dig it. A few people, perhaps struck dumb by my stylishness, can only manage "Hey! Ayyy, green!" - sometimes I smile and wave, other times I tell them I already knew about that. I think looking unusual makes people more willing to approach me. People on the bus, on the street, in the hallway at work, at jiujitsu class, at the park, and at the grocery store all have an opinion. Everybody on the street normally (when my hair is brown) just avoids eye contact. In some ways, this is a lot better.

I recently had to send in a businesslike picture of myself, and I sent that one . . . after converting it to black and white.

I'm like many other martial artists: I wish women would take up fighting sports more. I am actually a little lonely on the mat. Thing is, if I wasn't already into it I don't think I would want to take up martial arts, because I'm put off by the way people market these arts to women. Every ad you see for women's martial arts classes mentions self defense, and I don't believe that's a good way to get women interested for the long haul. "Self defense" is good for selling a weekend seminar, but for something that takes as much time and effort as real martial arts training it's not good motivation. These ads boil down to "study martial arts or you might get raped."

I still might get raped! I am getting pretty good at this fighting thing, but there's always someone who can defeat you. I'm not learning martial arts for self-defense. I spend as much time on martial arts as I might spend on a part-time job because I'm having a good time, not because some ad obliquely threatened me.

Girls just want to get jobs

Citing a recent study by two psychologists (one of them Martin E. P. Seligman, author of Learned Optimism), Washington Post education reporter Jay Mathews called attention to evidence that self-discipline—in particular, a capacity for deferred gratification—may be the best predictor of academic success, better than IQ: Do your homework, and plenty of practicing, before you watch television or sit down to play Xbox. That sounds, I know, like irresistible grist for an argument about whether and why girls might have an innate gift for just that kind of goody-goody, grindlike behavior, but let's not start it. It's a disservice to girls to portray them as destined for diligence, as though conscientious effort were a second-rate recourse for slower or steadier minds, rather than what is really is: a crucial choice that helps ensure long-term success. And it's an even bigger disservice to boys and their college prospects to reinforce the idea that discipline and self-denial are sissy stuff.

This from the end of an article in Slate on the recent ballyhoo about boys not doing their homework. It used to be girls who were too easily distracted to be well-suited for the rigorous academic life. Girls: irrational, emotional, unreliable, college-bound. What goes around comes around, fellas.

dementia pugilistica (in which I talk about fighting)

Recently I've been trying to find girls who want to take up brazilian jiujitsu. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I haven't had much luck. I want some company, and somebody else to help keep the ex-wrestlers in line (they need an ass-kicking periodically or they get uppity). There would be plenty of benefit for the hypothetical girl in question: muscles, fun, confidence, all that.

I just think girls need to get rid of the weakness mindset. I'm proud of my (still baby-size) muscles! They look nice! I'm proud that I could beat some people in a fight. And I'm having a good time. Who cares if it's not ladylike to get all sweaty. At least I'm not prancing around in spandex, stretching and making eyes at men lifting weights. Especially since the gyms I have access to are dominated by college students, that's a pretty common activity around here.

I've noticed that there are two styles of bjj-ers at my school. Especially among the white belts, there are a lot of ex-wrestlers, and they tend to be stronger than average so their matches involve a lot of big motions and powering through techniques. Then there are people who try to operate with a little more finesse - some are ex-wrestlers that got more skilled, but a lot of them are people like me: smaller than average, so they don't have the option of bench-pressing a guy and they have to do everything right. (Not that I do everything right - it's just that if I want to win I have to do everything right. I still lose a lot.) I've recently been avoiding the ex-wrestlers because they're tiring, but I guess that's something I'd better learn to handle.

There are some blogs out there written by women who box that I find encouraging: Brutal Women and Knife Fight are what I've come across so far. What I'm into isn't exactly boxing, but they seem to encounter the same attitudes about women and fighting that I've been thinking about. Truth is, it's a little bit solitary, being a lady fighter. Maybe it would help if I lived in a bigger city.

dumb as a wooden chicken

I have a cold and a new apartment. The apartment is swank and spacious. The cold is highly evolved. If colds were a good thing I would be proud of this one's quality; as it is, I can only say that about the apartment.

I found a webpage where the Chinese swearing in Firefly is translated, and it turns out to actually be swearing. This helps, because the actors' pronunciation is not very good - I wouldn't enjoy looking it up myself. This link is mostly so I can check back when I have time to learn swear words and other impolite things.

everything looks brighter when

Poking around this morning, I came across a review of a book of letters Richard Feynman wrote, collected by his daughter and published recently. It reminds me: I have a lot of books lined up to read. Now I've got to add this to it, as well:

You say you are a nameless man. You are not to your wife and to your child. You will not long remain so to your immediate colleagues if you can answer their simple questions when they come into your office. You are not nameless to me. Do not remain nameless to yourself—it is too sad a way to be. Know your place in the world and evaluate yourself fairly, not in terms of the naïve ideals of your own youth, nor in terms of what you erroneously imagine your teacher's ideals are.

Best of luck and happiness.

Sincerely,

Richard P. Feynman

I already had his Lectures on Physics on the list. These days I read the first thirds of books and then don't have time to finish them, and that's what happened the last time I tried to read those. Also on the list:

1. Gravity's Rainbow (also afflicted with First Third Disease)
2. Remembrance of Things Past
   
3. Ulysses (this one has First Few Pages Disease)
   
4. Analytical Mechanics, 4th ed. (this one is tangentially related to a project)
5. A book on optics whose name escapes me
6. The Feynman Lectures on Physics (this may have been the original carrier of First Third Disease - an especially virulent strain, since this has three volumes and I read the first third of each)
7. Norwegian Wood (I've been reading Murakami books off and on for a while now)
   

There are others, too, but clearly I've got my work cut out for me.

say it ain't so

My friend D. made some comments a few days ago that have been bouncing around in my head for a while now: "Why are you guys trying to add standing meditation, ground fighting, push hands, [. . .] to ksw when it doesn't actually contain those things? People who saw your demo and signed up knew what they wanted and were getting into. Why try to remake ksw when other things already exist that do what you want?"

Could it be true? Could our students really care more about looking cool than learning how to use their bodies effectively or developing practical fighting skills? Is that why the kind of person who joins the ksw club is not the same as me, T., B., or the kind of person who studies bjj or tj? Is that why we have so much trouble with bad attitudes among them?

I mean, I know what I want to learn. I've started to realize that studying ksw will probably not get me very far with that, so I've picked up other things. But I've been kind of assuming that the students want to learn those things too, so I've been passing on some of what I think helps. Maybe they don't want it, though.

I'm collaborating with this optics professor on an experiment right now while I simultaneously take a class on optics from him, and I'm starting to think I'd like to do more optics-related work. Maybe it's just because I get along with the guy, but there are also some really cool problems in the field.

I've been back here for a month, and I am still spending a lot of time reexamining whether I still want to do what I have been doing all along. Both parts of this post are related to that.

walking back to you is the hardest thing I could do (for you)

KSW has been crazy recently. That's what happens when you gut your old routine and re-make it in a different image. Some of the changes are good - we have this whole team-teaching thing going on, we're planning practices beforehand, and we worked in some practice time for ourselves. Awesome. Things run more smoothly and we get better. Some of the changes had unforeseen consequences, though. We got more relaxed about etiquette, and all of a sudden people were nagging us to promote them or teach them more stuff, getting defensive when we said they needed to work on something, dissing each other, and complaining when we made them drill something more than twice. Not Cool At All. We gotta get these kids some manners.

It makes me miss Boulder. I wasn't responsible for that kind of thing over there. I kept myself to myself, and my job was just to learn shit. Very simple. I did worry that F. and others would think I was uppity for wanting to speed up because I knew a little bit already, but I think everything worked out - I took the beginner class, and if I already knew it it was still something I could stand to drill. Then I went to open practice and people stopped thinking I was so much of a poseur when I said I knew a little. That's one big advantage to bjj. It keeps you honest. If you are not good at it, it will show when you lose to everybody. Of course, I lost to nearly everybody, but that's not so bad for a beginner. Losing is like resurrection - only in losing can you find eternal winning... or at least learn what they did to tap you out.

Oh, I found a bjj club here. Guess what I'm doing all the time now.

maps (my kind's your kind)

I'd been in Boulder for two months before I actually arrived here. Used to wishing I could get out of here, I've been tripped up: just about a week ago I realized there is something I'm going to miss. I even decided to try to come back. It's not for the job or the mountains - I will be sad to leave the jiujitsu school.

For me, and I think for a lot of other people who do a lot of martial arts, there's a specific kind of connection you make to some of the people you train with. To explain it I have to tell a story.

I've been here on this internship, and the way this happened is a little odd and unlikely; I didn't exactly apply in the usual sense. I was going about my grad-schooly business, and I gave a talk at a conference. A guy who works here remembered it, and that is how I got this job. It didn't make sense to me until I realized that seeing me do a talk will tell someone a lot more about me than meeting me at an interview. In 20 minutes they see what I work on, how well I communicate, how I respond to questions, and in general whether I've got a lick of sense or not.

A grappling match contains a lot of information about a person, similarly condensed. If they know a ton more than you, are they the kind to flaunt it and kick your ass in 15 seconds, or do they give you a chance to try some things, maybe point out where you go wrong, and then they win? Do they think it's better to lose a good match than to win a bad one? Are they careful, or are you afraid they'll break your arm? If you don't know a lot, are they too cool to roll with you, or will they take a minute to help you out? This stuff doesn't just tell you what kind of martial artist they are, it tells you a lot about what kind of person they are.

So I feel like I know a lot of great people from bjj here: nearly everyone is respectful, laid back, badass, approachable, and trustworthy. Some schools have a couple of really macho guys that ruin it for everybody else by confusing their training with their egos, but if those guys exist here they're outnumbered and outclassed.

For some reason it took me two months to get around to hanging out with anybody, though. I've been trying to cram all the fun into a single week, and I'm exhausted & flighty because of it. I lost my keys and got locked out of my house twice this week, but it was kind of fun. I'm pretty comfortable just looking somebody up and kickin' it until the roommates come home - what would I do in my apartment anyway?

The problem with all this is, I'm leaving today. Doing what you planned to do is sometimes the hardest thing.

This dj kills fascists

Far in the future, but in the works nonetheless: a Labor Party for Labor Day. What would such a party entail, do you think?

(a dj is not a machine, I know, but ok.)

T-R-A I-N-W R-E-C-K-Y

MCCLELLAN: I’m well aware, like you, of what was previously said. And I will be glad to talk about it at the appropriate time. The appropriate time is when the investigation…

QUESTION: (inaudible) when it’s appropriate and when it’s inappropriate?

MCCLELLAN: If you’ll let me finish.

QUESTION: No, you’re not finishing. You’re not saying anything.
You stood at that podium and said that Karl Rove was not involved. And now we find out that he spoke about Joseph Wilson’s wife. So don’t you owe the American public a fuller explanation. Was he involved or was he not? Because contrary to what you told the American people, he did indeed talk about his wife, didn’t he?

our skin gets thicker from living out in the snow

I'm homesick. I want to eat neighborhood food, hear my house's noises, walk under all my old trees.

that right ain't shit

The problem with the supreme court is that it stays however you put it pretty much until somebody dies.

In other news, ICSG may not actually leave town after all, and work is intellectually cool and progressing satisfactorily. I still kind of want to go home; things there are cheaper (and for the most part just as good), I have more friends, I don't have to drive so much, etc etc. I am also looking forward to the drive home, during which I insist upon stopping at Saleem's. Matt visited this weekend and that kind of made it worse - it is like how being hungry gets worse if you have a snack, or maybe (though I don't know this firsthand) how keeping a vow of silence is harder if you accidentally say "Oh shit."

what our knowledge amounts to

The story of ICSG continues: we went on a hike, then met her girlfriend and my neighbor for beers in one of Boulder's tiny brewery-things. They will probably leave town for good by the end of the week. It's unlikely that I'll ever see ICSG again, and I only really hung out with her for a total of maybe 4 hours. I'm still kind of down about it, though.

Today I got a ride to & from work with one of the other interns (car in the shop). It was a lonely time; on the way there, the Angry White Boy Nu-Metal station he listens to was talking about "My girlfriend's parents took a 7-year-old kid to the water park on Gay Pride Day. Oops! What a time for young eyes! Not that there's anything wrong with that." On the way home, it was "The Supreme Court says police don't have to enforce restraining orders. This guy who called in says women really just do that when they don't like their boyfriends anymore, anyway. No big deal."

Remember a long time ago, that MIT study about somen in science? Where they found that discrimination isn't "I just don't like women having that kind of jobs" so much as a more passive trend of not taking people seriously as people in one way or another?

Speaking of, a while ago my roommates were watching this show, "Crossing Jordan," maybe? It's about some sort of crime investigating lady. Anyway, the show was unremarkable, except that in nearly every scene some man would grab the leading lady by one or both arms and steer her to one side - usually up against a wall - and give her forceful, unwelcome advice (at best). Maybe with some finger-wagging. Even at her job this happens! I'd never stand for that. Weird how on UPN or whatever men can still literally push women around, even if they do allow them to have exciting crime-investigating jobs.

Also, I had a dream the night before last that N., one of my original martial arts big brothers, was back in CU for some practicing. I actually went back to sleep in order to finish a grappling match.

I used to think about you all the time; now I think about you all the time

I've been in Boulder for three weeks now. It has its ups and downs. Here in the apartment there's a strangely asymmetrical situation where I try to stay out of G.'s way and she is always annoyed with me for being in her way, or having been there in the past, or for letting her notice that I have attempted to get out of it, etc etc. I mostly just go to brazilian jiujitsu - because what is more out of the way than out of the house? Those guys are cool and not weird about girls the way some other martial arts guys are.

I've met a few people here that are nice. One guy from bjj asked me what kind of music I like and his eyes didn't glaze over when I answered - if he is at practice again later I will try to find out what his name is again because I forgot; one girl I met tonight at the ice cream store is leaving Boulder next week but I'm going hiking with her tomorrow night (if she calls me); one guy I work with is unconscionably hot (and also very friendly, but mostly hot).

Ice Cream Store Girl moved to Boulder with her girlfriend, but they don't like it here so they're moving back to parts further east, I guess. ICSG was sitting around by herself while my downstairs neighbors and I talked about the daily show, and I felt silly excluding someone who was so clearly interested. The four of us sat there outside the store until it closed, and then we felt weird hanging around outside a closed ice cream store so we went home to watch the daily show, which is apparently not on again at midnight on fridays, even though it is on every other night. ICSG lives nearby but did not come with us for the daily show. I hope she calls me, though.

I heard from my downstairs neighbors that my roommates say I fight with G. a lot. I am not even going to address the kind of dynamic that that implies. I don't think I do - I feel uncomfortable around her, sure, but I go out of my way to avoid fighting with G. I think this situation is so weird because she clearly doesn't care to go out of her way to avoid fighting with me. Like I said, asymmetrical.

Downstairs Guys are Taiwanese and [from Shanghai-I don't know if there is a special word for that, but we can go with Chinese which is simultaneously true], and they are all right. They say they will practice Chinese with me, but I am very shy and kind of afraid I'll suck. I suppose they expect it though. I'm going to need a dictionary.

So, Boulder: good and bad, but in general better if I am not at home.

pls update yr blog thx

I'm in Boulder now. My roommates are pretty much as I preemptively described them before. They're okay, if quirky. It is likely that they also think I'm quirky.

I drove past the jiujitsu place today. It's gratifyingly close to my house. So are ASIAN DELI, whole foods, and world market. This is one of those weird states where grocery stores don't sell wine - I hope world market still does.

Also, the sun is very very hot all the time, even when the air isn't. I'm going to need some sunscreen.

the infinite connectivity of the center of the sun

Matt and I are in Phoenix now. It's nice, though I have been pretty much constantly thirsty ever since we entered New Mexico. I haven't seen much of Phoenix yet, really, but there have been some other cool things.

1. Nebraksa's katamari is really huge. Actually just Nebraska. We drove all the way across it on I-80, and it took the better part of two days of driving. Also there is oil in Nebraska. I had no idea.
   
2. My new apartment is nice, if a little plain. I hope I can say the same for my roommates (the nice part, not the plain part).
3. Mountains make my ears hurt, and one of them took a while to get back to normal, but I think it's improving now. It will help that we are staying someplace flat for the next few days.
4. There is nothing to do in Albuquerque at 6:30 on a Tuesday. Also, it is hard to find any Mexican food, which was surprising. What we did find sucked.
5. Apparently some hotels set up their TVs so that you can't connect your gamecube or other external AV device to them. Stupid!
   
6. I saw the Very Large Array in New Mexico (this is at National Radio Astronomy Observatory). The VLA is very cool in its own right, but it's also where they filmed "Contact," so I guess non-engineers like it too. It's got a stupid name, though.
   
7. We drove through Pie Town, NM, but we did not stop for pie. I regret that immensely.
8. We finally found some awesome mexican food in Show Low. Ask Matt what he ate sometime when you have an hour to spare. It totally beats Albuquerque in that regard.
9. Because of the VLA, we took US 60 across to Phoenix instead of taking I-40. 60 is one of those two-lane roads that is Main street in all the towns it goes through. In many towns it was the only street.
   
10. Driving through mountains is pretty fun if you have a lot of time on your hands. If you're actually trying to get somewhere it gets old, though. Thankfully, Phoenix and its suburbs are flat.

I'd post pictures, but Matt isn't awake to host them.

a new goddamn era

The first pictures I took were a series of "how to tie your belt" instruction photos for my brother.

the west is dead and it's burning

For the past two weeks, I've had a personal soundtrack entirely composed of songs by the Books. I hope it keeps up; it's nice having songs in my head that I never get tired of listening to.

Our road trip is going to begin in three days. I don't know what to do with myself. Pack, I suppose, since the trip is on the way to my internship, and I'll be pretty unhappy if I don't pack with foresight and judiciousness.

At work I'm also getting ready to leave, but in a strange way. I think my advisor thinks that leaving on Friday will make me superhuman. She wants a first version of this journal paper before I go, and I have stupidly committed myself to completely rewriting the whole analysis section (formerly three chapters) so that it addresses the three cases in parallel rather than one at a time. There's a good reason to do it this way, but right now I'm regretting what I got myself into.

This week marks a lucky confluence of many events: I had enough money to buy the digital camera I've been wanting right before we leave to go on the road trip. So it's just in time. Then I went to get a memory card for it, and there was a strange technology-price inversion where the really huge one was actually cheaper than either of the two capacities of cards I had originally thought it would be reasonable to buy. Finally, at work they are upgrading the network, so I'm working from home on the very same morning that my camera is supposed to arrive by UPS, and I don't even have to feel bad about it. Matt says he'll let me host pictures in his space, so I'll post some when it arrives. Clearly I can't take pictures of the camera itself, but I'll take example pictures or something.

Oh, and just now my biggest little brother B. told me he was standing around wearing his brand new tae kwon do uniform, which fills me with family pride and brotherhood and shit. I taught him how to tie his belt over IM. Aww.

Arch-ery

On Thursday I turned in my thesis, and it was a kind of strange feeling. I'd been editing it & making revisions for a couple of weeks off and on, and then I wandered up to the graduate college, they checked whether my figures were on the pages the list of figures said they were on, and took it. Excepting waiting, the whole thing took ten minutes. (The waiting was more like a half hour or more. That's part of why the in & out bit of it seemed so weird to me.)

Despite the anti-climasticity (when you have a master's degree they let you make up words) of that whole thing, it is lucky that I turned it in when I did. See, the deadline was Friday and not Thursday, but I had to drive to St. Louis on Friday for a kuk sool tournament. Matt & R. & I ate at IHOP in the morning, drove to St. Louis, R and I tested for black belt (1), and we didn't get time for dinner until about 11 at night. We went to this fantastic Lebanese place whose kitchen was about to close. Make sure you eat at Saleem's, y'all. I mean, even if we hadn't been imploding from hunger this would have been awesome food (2).

The next day there was a kuk sool tournament, which is what everyone except me was in town for (I didn't compete, I just tested). They had split up the tournament into kids' and adults' sections, with the kids competing in the morning and the adults in the afternoon. This was awesome, except they put the promotion ceremony/masters' demo in the middle of the day. They promoted me, and when they were ready to start the afternoon competition they were short on judges. They asked all the black belts who weren't actually competing to come down & be a judge. I didn't volunteer at first, because I didn't really think I counted in my hour-old black belt. But then they started threatening to come up in the bleachers and get us, so I figured I had better go. That whole thing was kind of uncomfortable.

(1) There were so many people in such a small room, working out for such a long time, that the floor-to ceiling mirrors and windows all fogged up. I hardly remember the test, I just remember the food.

(2) Matt ordered this great thing, which then was accidentally put in front of me. By the time we figured that out, I had already eaten half of it and I wasn't giving it back. I think it might have been called "mouzat" but the description I've found of that doesn't quite match what I was eating. Whatever, it had an M and a Z and some lamb in it. With rice.

in a second

I think that for the duration of the camping trip I miraculously turned into a badass. I'm not normally as awesome as all that, and now that I'm back the effect has worn off. I'm not a martial arts master, and lack of sleep catches up with me just like any other person. But man, this weekend was different. I kicked ass and took names.

And why is it that all I want to eat this week is rice?

every single molecule is right

That camping trip that I've been setting up all week starts today. This is a relief, as is the end of any period where you have to plan a 48-hour thing for 13 people. Yesterday I pre-chopped all the vegetables and bought a very impressive cooler, and now all that's left is to take some things out of the dryer and hope the teaching goes as well as the camping will.

Another thing that is nearing completion is my thesis. I gave that to the publication department - those people who check for grammar and formatting - yesterday afternoon. Within two weeks I fully expect to turn it in. Holy shit.

I've been trying to understand why I get so worked up about women-politics in particular. It's not like general politics affect me any less. But they don't get me into the kind of towering rage that things like anti-abortion wackos do. I mean, corruption? Gerrymandering? Dismantling social security and nominating assholes? Those things are pretty bad. But mention pharmacists and I fly off the handle.

tomorrow's lunch today

I have noticed that if I eat out less I get skinnier. This is nice, except it means I have to pack a lunch. It used to mean that, anyway. These days I can go to the food co-op (which is a block away from work) and buy cheese, bread, vegetables, whatever. I don't have a knife, though, so I have to eat them all separately, in torn-off chunks. I don't mind.

I am going to finish this edit of my thesis this week, I say. That gives me 2 weeks for formatting-type revisions and everything.

mighty, fallen, etc etc

The Riviera was a lot more impressive in the old version of Ocean's Eleven - where it really was the most sophisticated thing on the street - than it is up close & in person in the present day. Maybe I'm just not all that into the flashing-lights and things-made-of-gold scene. Other hotels have cool gimmicks - they are pyramid-shaped or New York-shaped, or they have Cirque du Soleil shows or rollercoasters. This one has a casino, a bunch of dancing-girl boob shows (3 or 4 simultaneously!), and a pool which is closed because it's not warm enough. It's got all these pamphlets that bill it as "the grown-up option." Yeah right. More like the "everyone who does government technological research is a man" option.

p.s. the time stamp is in Las Vegas time!

he might replace the earth with the moon

(if I had written it that's what it would be.)

Matt's had 154 in the car for the past few days, and up until now I didn't realize what a difference the CD makes. I've heard a lot of these songs before, but they were on tapes or mp3 or a few years ago, and they are different now. I drove a block: "Self, is this Wire?"

I've been meeting with T. and B. a lot to talk about a camp we're setting up for kuk sool - it was originally just a camping trip, but we have all these ideas, and it's turned into an all-day seminar. Exciting. They're talking about how we're going to try to change how ksw practices are run after I promote, and I'm happy about that too. Our old teacher rarely even had a lesson plan, and I don't understand how he could just wing it all the time. We're talking about meeting weekly, having goals for the class... refreshing! I wish we could expect people to at least work out a little on their own, though. I'd love to spend class time on making people better at kuk sool instead of just making them feel less guilty for eating.

Have I mentioned that before? I feel like a lot of people use practices as a time to make up for any pie they had over winter break. I have more than one problem with this:

1. Making up for pie in that fashion points to them having some weird attitudes about themselves, food, and fitness that I don't want to be part of.
   
2. If they were paying attention, martial arts would teach them not to eat too much pie in the first place.
3. They are in kuk sool to get badass, not to get skinny.
4. Workouts take away from practice time, and the curriculum moves way too fast as it is.

That last point is a result of a larger problem - at least, I view it as a problem: people want to have black belts before they graduate. Now, it is possible to get to that level in that amount of time. But people come in as white belts and they specifically want a particular color at a particular time. If they think they can't do that, a lot of them will quit because they "won't have gotten anywhere." So the class has to go at a particular speed because ksw introduced some artificial milestones. I want to make testing more optional - we should discuss students' progress with them and let them know before testing comes around whether they should bother with it or not. Then we can stop promoting people prematurely without so many hard feelings.

I'm going to visit my parents tomorrow. It's too bad they're not into roast leg of lamb, because that would make a great Easter dinner. I'm not so much into the eggs & chocolate event anymore, but I will take any excuse to make an impressive dinner.

np: Matt's mix that has "You Can Make Me Feel Bad" and "As You Do" on it

Iron Chef Urbana

Recently I've been consumed by a fit of cooking (and eating), brought on by my memory of the Clarkston Union's macaroni and cheese and fueled by my recent viewing of Steven Chow's God of Cookery. My weekly half-day of baking hasn't been enough, and I've been having adventures.

First, I dressed up my best chicken recipe for dinner with my brother when he was visiting. I served it with clever artichokes (we had two - there were four people - artichokes look awesome cut in half the long way - clever) and some squishy co-op cheese, and everyone was impressed.

Later on, after a couple of weeks of careful consideration, I determined that the secret ingredient in the aforementioned macaroni (besides the overt but delicious breadcrumb topping and ham chunks) must be parmesan cheese. The sauce was just mysteriously tangy. I was proved right with the aid of a little extra pepper.

Friday I watched God of Cookery with B., P., K., and Matt. Awesome.

Then I went to a wedding, which had good food, and a party that also had good food. But yesterday was the best adventure yet - I made a deliciously seasonal stuffed leg of lamb with all kinds of planty-tasting herbs and vegetables in it. I've never been so impressed by fennel. C. came over and had some, and we gave him some to take home to M. - I hope she liked it.

The combination of my culinary adventures and having seen that movie led B. to suggest a God of Cookery - themed party/potluck, in which everone is flamboyant and chefy. We'd offer a prize or something for Best Dish. But not everyone has seen this movie, and not everyone wants to cook like that. If they hadn't seen it, how would they know what to bring? We couldn't even accomplish that by showing it at the party, because then when would they have time to cook something suitable? But if we could work something out, it'd be the best meal most of us have ever had.

qualified

Is it Tuesday?

I think it is beer Tuesday.

Judgment

Today's the day. I'll let you know.

I am a great fan of triangles

My brother is visiting the university this weekend, since the college of engineering is having an open house. It's kind of like a science fair, and he's staying with me. I'm not sure what to do with him.

See, K. seems content to stay home most of the time. I asked him what he'd do if he lived here, and he told me "Oh, study, do homework, play D&D." Maybe I am out of touch with what he likes. But if he's going to move out of a Detroit suburb (even he admits there is nothing to do there) to a town that reguarly has concerts, plays, events, cool workshops, and all that, I think he ought to take advantage of it. I want him to realize the opportunity he has in going away to school - to try everything out and not just do engineering and sit in the basement. How do I get that across? I want him to treat engineering like his day job, and make sure that he tries out everything he can in his off-time.

One of my friends works at a jewelry counter these days, and I got something for my mom there (making sure I get mother's day under control). But I might go back and get this other thing that I saw, for myself. I'm very impulsive, but only around tax-refund time.

CELEBRATOR DOPPELBOCK

I took the qualifying exam Saturday, and I might have passed it. There were some problems I thought were really bad, but it seemed like everyone else who did those problems agreed. I figure I'm okay, then, because they can't just fail all the electromagnetics students.

Several of my friends (and Matt) went out with me to my local afterward, and I had some very nice new kinds of beer. Particularly noteworthy were Great Divide Wild Raspberry Ale and Celebrator Doppelbock. Also I've been buying indulgent things on ebay.

I can play video games again, and I've got Pikmin (1 followed by 2), Prince of Persia, and Sly 2 for that purpose. Those will probably help me hold on while I pray for the game types to hurry up with Final Fantasy 12 or the new Zelda or something.

"in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude"

I've been following that Larry Summers thing the way other people watch a train wreck. So today I was idly following links, and I found out that in the mid-90s MIT realized it didn't have very many women faculty either. Heavens! What to do? Since doing studies is one of their strengths, they did a study.

Interestingly, it turns out that women don't begin their careers disillusioned, but they slowly become that way:

The Committee discovered that junior women faculty feel well supported within their departments and most do not believe that gender bias will impact their careers. Junior women faculty believe, however, that family-work conflicts may impact their careers differently from those of their male colleagues. In contrast to junior women, many tenured women faculty feel marginalized and excluded from a significant role in their departments. Marginalization increases as women progress through their careers at MIT.

One compelling piece of data was this graph of the percentage of MIT's faculty who were women from 1985-1994:

I saw that and I was speechless for about five minutes.

Apparently, women tended to begin their careers thinking the problem of discrimination had already been solved, and then mistrust the conclusions they drew from their own experiences.


An important finding to emerge from the interviews was that the difference in the perception of junior and senior women faculty about the impact of gender on their careers is a difference that repeats itself over generations. Each generation of young women, including those who are currently senior faculty, began by believing that gender discrimination was "solved" in the previous generation and would not touch them. Gradually however, their eyes were opened to the realization that the playing field is not level after all, and that they had paid a high price both personally and professionally as a result.

From the letter written by the women Science faculty members that started the study:

We believe that discriminatory attitudes operate at the time of hiring junior faculty and influence the experiences of the women who are hired. Most discrimination at MIT, whether practiced by men or women, is largely unconscious. Often it is difficult to establish discrimination as a factor because any one case, no matter how disturbing or aberrant, can usually be ascribed to its special circumstances... Thus, we need to develop safeguards to prevent, detect, and promptly correct the experiences that together constitute gender discrimination...

The article also had some powerful insights about what constitutes discrimination in our times, which they called the "post-Civil-Rights era."


How else might we explain what happened to the senior women faculty in Science? While the reasons for discrimination are complex, a critical part of the explanation lies in our collective ignorance. We must accept that what happened to the tenured women faculty in the School of Science is what discrimination is. It defines discrimination in the period from the 1970s up till today. But we, including for a long time the women faculty themselves, were slow to recognize and understand this for several reasons. First, it did not look like what we thought discrimination looked like. Most of us thought that the Civil Rights laws and Affirmative Action had solved gender "discrimination". But gender discrimination turns out to take many forms and many of these are not simple to recognize. Women faculty who lived the experience came to see the pattern of difference in how their male and female colleagues were treated and gradually they realized that this was discrimination. But when they spoke up, no one heard them, believing that each problem could be explained alternatively by its "special circumstances". Only when the women came together and shared their knowledge, only when the data were looked at through this knowledge and across departments, were the patterns irrefutable.

The tenured women faculty, acting as a group through the Committee, together with the Dean, made a discovery. They identified the forms that gender "discrimination" takes in this post-Civil-Rights era. They found that discrimination consists of a pattern of powerful but unrecognized assumptions and attitudes that work systematically against women faculty even in the light of obvious good will.

I'm impressed that they did the study, and doubly impressed that they took its results seriously and made policy changes in response. And the changes have made a difference - in 1999 the School of Science's faculty was more than 10% women for the first time ever. But even that is depressing: 10% is an improvement? We're starting from so far behind.

This is an important initiative since, even with continued effort of this magnitude, the inclusion of substantial numbers of women on the Science and Engineering faculties of MIT will probably not occur during the professional lives of our current undergraduate students.

Damn. Probably not during the professional lives of current undergrads. Damn.

radio urbana free library

Urbana had a primary yesterday, including one for (democrat) mayor. I voted in it! Urbana's crappy current mayor lost, and a way more progressive person will probably take his place (Urbana isn't going to elect a republican mayor - I don't even know if one will run). Also it'll be our first-ever female mayor. Bonus!

And so at 10:30 yesterday morning I was just walking out of the voting building when my phone rang. I figured it was Matt or my mom or something, but when I answered it turned out to be a phone interview in disguise! Okay, not in disguise. But I didn't know it was coming.

1. See, they emailed me the Wednesday before last, said they'd be doing interviews "shortly," and asked for some times that would be all right to call me. Not sure how long shortly is, I said "Friday or Tuesday during the day, or Wednesday before 3 pm." I assumed they would tell me when they planned to do it.
   
2. Not so! I didn't hear anything from them for a week. Still assuming they'd tell me before they called (so I wasn't, y'know, busy voting or getting a haircut) , I just did whatever I felt like yesterday morning.
3. What to do? I was in the middle of the street trying to get an internship from an antenna engineer. At a loss, I turned around and went back in the voting building. I was sitting in this auxiliary-church-building cafeteria, the place empty except for me and the janitor, talking about phased arrays and how I really liked my radio circuits class.
   

It sounds like a cool job. I don't have a lot of hands-on experience - all my serious work so far has been pretty analytical, and I hope they don't mind that. But I think other than my lack of experience in that regard the interview went all right.

Then I walked the rest of the way to campus and got a haircut, which was basically the best ever. The stylist was this awesome girl who pretty clearly likes bands, and she knew what I meant to describe, haircut-wise, and did all my favorite razory things. It helped that I brought a picture. Everyone should definitely bring a picture when they get a new haircut. And she talks a lot, which is awesome.

I finally put slsk on my computer - I hadn't before because it's a laptop so a lot of the time it's not on or plugged in. But I figured that leaving my computer on at night is a small price to pay for all that awesome. So what should I listen to now?

I'm not so afraid of the qualifying exam anymore. First I wasn't, then I wasted a lot of study-time by studying the same thing for too long. Then I was worried I didn't have enough time left to get ready. But in the past few days I've managed to sufficiently study acoustics in not very much time. So maybe I can pull it off for other things (remote sensing, lasers, semiconductors, DSP) too, in the two weeks I have left.

secretly, between the shadow and the soul

I've recently taken up baking, for the food co-op. I hang out there with one of the taiji guys on Monday mornings, just cooking. And yesterday was a Monday, so I was there (a little late because I missed the usual bus). But it was also Valentine's Day, so we made some of the loaves heart-shaped. At least, we thought we did.

I couldn't stay until the bread came out of the oven - I never can - because I have classes in the afternoon and I feel like I ought to make an appearance at work, at least. So when I came back around 7 to get some bread for myself, imagine my surprise. The hearts had big cracks down the middle. Maybe it was because I'd poked a couple of them to give better definition to the lobes of the heart-shapes. Something happened, anyway, and S. had renamed it "oh go ahead and break my heart" bread.

Apparently the broken hearts sold pretty well - by the time I got there only one was left, and it kind of looked like a butt. I took that one, because my heart isn't broken but everyone likes butts.

np: Arthur Russell - "You Can Make Me Feel Bad"

best use of the same lyric for more than 1 continuous minute

Ted Leo & the Pharmacists : "Little Dawn"

a telephone conversation with my dad and what matt thought I was talking about

Me: You hit a wall?
Matt: Her dad was in a car crash! Oh no!
Me: You broke it?
Matt: He has a broken bone (oh no) but is otherwise okay.
Me: Can you get a new one?
Matt: Oh, actually he broke a piece of the car, then.
Me: Did you win?
Matt: What the hell?
Me: I guess that makes sense. Of course he beat you if you had a broken racquet.
Matt: Does tennis have walls?



Actually he was playing racquetball.

you don't have to go to college

A lot of things have been going on.

1. I am probably going to New Mexico this summer for an internship at Sandia National Lab.

2. I just recently heard about Camp Wellstone and associated projects, and I want to do something related to that.

3. Last night I saw Moolaade, and then I talked about it in mixed (male/female) company. I came out of the film angry - angry that tradition sometimes has more weight than the real harm it does to real people. I was angry that every step on the way to making women count as much as men has been a fight. I generalized this one extreme example of subjugation to the entire struggle. And when I talked about that with this group, some of them commented that I shouldn't judge other cultures, that maybe traditions ought to be respected. But for me, when women's humanity is abridged, negated, ignored, or conveniently forgotten it's personal. I don't have to be there and have it happen to me - I am a woman, and I feel it. Some women don't have that reaction. Like men, they're free to talk about respecting traditions. I can't do that, because when I think about what happens to women in the name of tradition I feel as though I have been attacked and my country is under siege. I'm not ready to hold a reasoned discussion about respecting diverse cultures, I'm ready to bite and scratch like an animal. Maybe that's wrong and we ought to humor people who think women don't deserve to be counted as half of humanity. I don't care.

There are a lot of other things that make this list. People who think women are the property of their husbands, who punish women for the sexual response that men have to them, who keep women under house arrest as a matter of course, who want to limit contraception and abortion in order to remove any control women have over their own bodies - I won't accept that this kind of bigotry deserves a reasoned response.

I had a similar reaction when in November all those states passed anti-gay amendments. I've got a bisexual friend who's practically part of my family, and I spent quite a while with an itchy punching-hand. That's my friend, my household, that they're saying isn't capable of the same kind of love as everyone else. Punch punch punch.

4. Square envelopes require an extra 12 cents of postage.

5. I like giving out presents but I don't like the commercialization of this holiday. But I like its decorations, food, and rituals at the same time as I don't care for the tradition it stands for. I like having something pretty and celebratory to look at and do in the winter, because winter is cold and depressing. Celebrations really need a group of people to agree that there is a substantial reason to celebrate, though, or they flop. I'm one of the people that would contribute to such a flop. I think New Year's is much more worthy of celebration. But everyone celebrates Christmas - if I want to see my family, that's the party I have to go to. I can't just invent my own holiday, because of the celebration-requires-people rule. But I don't feel honest participating in this one, since I was one of those kids for whome the pledge of allegiance went "one nation, under hmmm." I am conflicted about Christmas.

6. Recently I've been tempted to go hang out with Unitarians, except that they seem to require that you think spirituality is important and good for you, and spirituality may or may not mean belief in something that is outside of what science can ever tell us about the world. Seems like a lot of the time they do think there's some sort of driving force to the universe, and we ought to do something like worship about it, and I don't think that. But I like their politics, I like to sing songs, and I like having friends. I like learning about religions, but I certainly don't like learning about them with the assumption that eventually I'll get one, and I'm afraid that Unitarians think I ought to have some Beliefs. I don't want Beliefs, I just want to hang out with a community that maybe sometimes talks about their values (and whose values are kind of similar to mine).

7. Finals week ended. I am going to clean off my desk, finish my thesis, and study for the qual during winter break.

8. What can I do as a volunteer now to get moderate-liberal ideas a foothold in mainstream people? Everyone's talking about 2006, but between now and then we need to convince people that Social Security is not broken, that people deserve old age and unemployment insurance, that the minimum wage should be raised . . . . that the platform we're going to run on in 2006 has merit and they should vote for it. How do I do that? How do I make myself an example, a missionary of progressivism?

9. I like cooking and I like vegetables. What's the best vegetarian cookbook ever?

10. Oh, a while ago we had Thanksgiving at my house. It was nice, there was a lot of food and everybody liked it. Matt's family and mine hung out for a while, and we were all social. This is nicer than traveling to someone else's party.