bearing blog

bearing blog


bear – ing n 1  the manner in which one comports oneself;  2  the act, power, or time of bringing forth offspring or fruit; 3 a machine part in which another part turns [a journal ~];  4  pl comprehension of one’s position, environment, or situation;   5  the act of moving while supporting the weight of something [the ~ of the cross].

  • Mad dogs and humans.

    Interesting article about rabies, which until recently was 100% fatal in symptomatic humans — maybe — and the story of the last-ditch desperate cure that seems to work — maybe.

    There is something very compelling about the narrative, in which a physician who is completely inexperienced in rabies treatment, but faced with a young doomed patient, buries his nose in the books and comes up with a Crazy Idea That Just Might Work:

    [T]oday, after millennia of futility, hospitals have an actual treatment to try. It was developed in 2004 by a pediatrician in Milwaukee named Rodney Willoughby, who, like the vast majority of American doctors, had never seen a case of rabies before. (In the US, there are usually fewer than five per year.) Yet Willoughby managed to save a young rabies patient, a girl of 15, by using drugs to induce a deep, week-long coma and then carefully bringing her out of it. It was the first documented case of a human surviving rabies without at least some vaccination before the onset of symptoms. Soon Willoughby posted his regimen online, and he worked with hospitals around the world to repeat and refine its use. Now referred to as the Milwaukee protocol, his methodology has continued to show limited success: Of 41 attempts worldwide, five more patients have pulled through…

    Even though his specialty was infectious disease, Willoughby knew almost nothing about rabies. “For the board exams,” he says, “you only needed to know one thing: that it was 100 percent fatal.” He telephoned the CDC to ask if there was any treatment somewhere in the research pipeline—some promising new therapy, perhaps, not yet published in any medical journal. The CDC had nothing. Not one person had ever been shown to survive rabies without having gotten at least partial vaccination before the virus reached the brain.

    With less than a day to formulate a plan, Willoughby attacked the problem with quick but deliberate reading, using his limited time to review the basic neuroscience of rabies.

    …Willoughby laid out a last-ditch idea, the surprising result of his day of reading and thinking. The solution, he says in retrospect, had been “hiding in plain sight.”

    A pretty exciting story, but one that still remains largely unconfirmed by fundamental research. The article details some of the objections that have been raised by researchers. Still, when you are dealing with “100% fatal,” it becomes much more attractive to try the untested.

    On the same topic: I heard on NPR a week or two ago that there is a new nonfiction book out on rabies, called Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus. It sounded good, but I have to get in line for a copy at the library. The authors are a husband-and-wife team (he’s a journalist, she’s a veterinarian). I am looking forward to it, when I move to the head of the line.

    I am really in the mood to read something fluffy and light, which for me means “almost anything nonfiction.” I just barely managed to finish Kristin Lavransdatter in time to return it to the library before it went overdue, and while I enjoyed the book, it exhausted me as epic multigenerational literature tends to do. If it were not for the patronymics I would never have been able to keep track of everyone, but at least since I always had a clue as to whose daughter or son everybody was (Kristin is Lavrans’s daughter, get it?), I didn’t fall very far behind.

    Anyway, after having struggled through Kristin (a book which, at least, got better and more gripping the deeper I got into it), I polished off the deeply weird nonfiction book The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson in a matter of hours. This is part nonfiction and part introspection, a book about psychopathology and mental illness — or maybe it is more about the author’s investigation into psychopathology, since Ronson injects all kinds of commentary about his interviewees and his own reactions to them throughout the book. The style is mildly self-deprecating, and Ronson depicts himself as sort of star-struck by the people he is interviewing — he is forever being amazed that he has managed to score the interviews with this eminent researcher or that institutionalized criminal or this other possibly psychopathic CEO — and somewhere in the middle of the book I began to be convinced that the style was really just an act meant to guide the reader to conclusions about the interviewees. (Namely, that maybe the psychiatrists who study psychopathology are sometimes themselves psychopaths.)

    I think I will stop here before anyone draws any conclusions about the fact that I suggested books about rabies and psychopaths as beach reads. Ahem.

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  • Catholic geeks.

    Yesterday, SF author and blogger John Scalzi wrote a piece  entitled, "Who Gets To Be a Geek?  Anyone Who Wants To Be" that delighted me.  

    (The piece was in response to an article at CNN by Joe Peacock, believe it or not, disparaging — for not being genuine geeks — pretty, sexily-dressed women who come to events like ComicCon, including the ones who are hired by sponsors to work at the booths.  I am not the sort of geek who goes to that sort of convention, so I really can't judge the Peacock piece on the merits of its claims.)

    But I loved John Scalzi's response, because of the way he encapsulated geekdom:

    Geekdom is a nation with open borders. There are many affiliations and many doors into it. There are lit geeks, media geeks, comics geeks, anime and manga geeks. There are LARPers, cosplayers, furries, filkers, crafters, gamers and tabletoppers. There are goths and horror geeks and steampunkers and academics. There are nerd rockers and writers and artists and actors and fans. Some people love only one thing. Some people flit between fandoms. Some people are positively poly in their geek enthusiasms. Some people have been in geekdom since before they knew they were geeks. Some people are n00bs, trying out an aspect of geekdom to see if it fits. If it does, great. If it doesn’t then at least they tried it.

    Many people believe geekdom is defined by a love of a thing, but I think — and my experience of geekdom bears on this thinking — that the true sign of a geek is a delight in sharing a thing. It’s the major difference between a geek and a hipster, you know: When a hipster sees someone else grooving on the thing they love, their reaction is to say “Oh, crap, now the wrong people like the thing I love.” When a geek sees someone else grooving on the thing they love, their reaction is to say “ZOMG YOU LOVE WHAT I LOVE COME WITH ME AND LET US LOVE IT TOGETHER.”

    Any jerk can love a thing. It’s the sharing that makes geekdom awesome.

    This is wonderful.  I mean, really wonderful.  

    For one thing, it neatly skewers the notion that being a geek is really all about being an outcast because The Greater World doesn't understand the stuff the geeks do understand.  If that were so, it would be impossible to be a geek about anything that happens to be, at the moment, popular.  The boundaries of geekdom would shift with the winds of popular culture.

    But you know, and I know, that being a geek is something about who you are, not about who accepts you or even about who accepts your interests.

    The reason that the world stereotypes socially inept outcasts as geeks, and geeks as socially inept outcasts, is because — these days, anyway — the world considers it socially inept to betray a deep interest in any subject.  To care about an idea, or a subject, and to care about getting the details right more than caring about what other people think.  

    Some people have the sort of charismatic personality or way with words — or other sort of attractiveness — that makes them perfectly able to publicly express enthusiasm in a way that infects others.  Not all geeks have this gift, because the world is mostly turned off by people who don't have the habit of disparaging deep interest.  The habit of cool — figuratively, being at most lukewarm about everything and everyone, because warmth betrays caring. 

    Geek and cool are opposites by nature.  And "cool" is highly prized today.  Fortunately, there are other ways of standing out — society's not so far gone that it doesn't sometimes appreciate the not-cool.  And so geekdom and outcasts are not identical sets.

    + + +

    Although once my husband called me "nerdy-cool."  Which is just about the most romantic thing I can imagine.

    + + +

    Here's another place I found the term "geek," or sometimes its almost-interchangeable synonym "nerd," is useful.  

    A few weeks ago when Bearing Blog Epidemiologist ChristyP was in town for a conference, she introduced me to a colleague, whose name I knew well because he has published numerous articles about natural family planning and about the bioethics of reproductive health.  

    He asked me, "How is it that you found out about NFP?"  

    I started with "Well, I'm Catholic –"

    He said, quite correctly, "That isn't a sufficient answer."

    I paused and said slowly: "I'm kind of a Catholic nerd."  Turned and looked to ChristyP — "That kind of sums it up, doesn't it?"  – and she indicated that it would do, at least for the purposes of that brief conversation!

    Thinking back on it, I believe it does suffice.  (I used "nerd" because I wasn't sure whether "geek" has too recent a vintage to mean something to this gentleman — indeed the usage frequency of "geek" has lagged about 8 years behind that of "nerd" since about 1980.  But I meant something exactly like the "geek" of Scalzi's piece.)   

    I mean, I think most of us who intend to live Catholic doctrine as if we really believed it, as written, to be correct sometimes use shorthand like "orthodox Catholic" to refer to others who decline to dissent in any way from Church teaching, but that term doesn't satisfy.  For one thing, it's easily confused with "Orthodox Christian" which is a distinct ecclesiastical community, or it may be construed as some weird kind of shorthand for Eastern Rite Catholics.  

    For another thing, it's often used as if it were the opposite of terms like "progressive Catholic" or "liberal Catholic" or "social justice Catholic", when that's really not so.  One can adhere to every bit of what's in the catechism and yet feel more affinity with liberal or progressive politics (remember:  we operate in every country in the world) or perceive that one's particular evangelistic calling is centered around topics that get classified as "social justice."  

    For a third thing, although it's useful shorthand in private conversation with others you agree with, I doubt that "orthodox" is understood the same way by the wider culture of English-speaking Catholics.   Self-identified Catholics dissent for a lot of reasons — many are intellectually honest, informed, and deliberate, many "own" their position, but others are lashing out in anger and hurt, while still others oppose a strawman.  I haven't taken a survey, but it strikes me that a large number of those people would take some umbrage at us toe-the-line types for claiming the term "orthodox."  And terms are no good in discourse unless you agree on the meaning.

    For a fourth thing, and I mean no disrespect — I don't think all the "orthodox Catholics" are also "Catholic geeks."  (And likely as not there are Catholic geek dissenters.) 

    But "Catholic nerd," though, or "geek," seems to fit the bill pretty well, and more precisely than just "orthodox" — at least for me.  With that term, I'm trying to get across that I'm interested  in Catholic theology, liturgy, and moral life.  I'm interested in getting it right, in being able to split hairs, because ZOMG I LOVE IT PLEASE COME WITH ME AND LOVE IT TOO. 

    It implies, I hope, not just that I wish to toe the line, but that I have, in fact, drunk the Kool-Aid.  TASTE AND SEE.

    In many ways a geek is a geek.  Others call us hairsplitting or even jesuitical (Jesuits:  Perhaps the original Catholic geek organization, regardless of where they find themselves today), but it's no less fun to pick apart difficult moral questions than it is to have passionate arguments about, say, literature or physics.  

    I mean, really:  there's a certain affinity among these:

    • having a passionate argument using fluxes and mass balances about the question "Does running in the rain make you wetter or dryer than walking?"  (real example I remember from the lunch table in graduate school)
    •  having a detailed email discussion on the question  "If a woman has suffered multiple ectopic pregnancies, is it licit for her to request surgical removal of the Fallopian tubes, because of a reasonable suspicion that there is something wrong with them, on the grounds that it is generally permissible to remove a 'diseased body part' and that the consequent sterilization is a secondary, undesired effect that is nevertheless permitted under the principle of double effect?  Or does double effect not apply, because in fact the directly desired effect is prevention of all pregnancies, this being the means by which the prevention of a specific disease in the Fallopian tube  is to be brought about?"
    • insisting that it's a vital blow to the preservation of American film culture that George Lucas whitewashed the fact HAN SOLO TOTALLY SHOT FIRST?

    All of these are the kinds of questions that only true geeks care about, at least deeply enough to argue about it at length instead of doing what other people might call "getting on with their lives."

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  • Imperceptible change.

    From today's Office of Readings (Prime).  I arranged the paragraph breaks and indentations to highlight the parallelism.

    We are afflicted…

    but we are not crushed;

    full of doubts, 

    we never despair.

    We are persecuted 

    but never abandoned; 

    we are struck down

    but never destroyed….

    While we live we are constantly being delivered to death for Jesus' sake,

    so that the life of Jesus may be revealed in our mortal flesh.

     

    This is, of course, part of the "earthen vessels" discourse in Paul's second letter to the Corinthians (chapter 4).

     I am particularly taken, this morning, with 

    [F]ull of doubts, we never despair.

    The common conception of faith is that it is the opposite of doubt — that we have faith in just exactly the measure that enjoy freedom from doubt.  Not so.  

    It's true that "never despairing" is technically the flowering of the virtue of hope, but it's in the face of doubt that hope does all its work — and you can't tell me that hope only blooms where faith fails.  Doubt, therefore, cannot be a failure of faith.  

    Like the afflictions, persecutions, and blows with which it is made parallel in the passage, doubts are, I think, something that happens to us.  

    Faith and hope are among the possible responses to such doubts, those responses being something that is  engendered by us — that  comes from us – in cooperation with grace.   

    I maintain that it's quite unfortunate that fides — faith — has come in English to connote mostly "belief" or "lack of doubt."  Much better to think of it via its cognates fidelity and faithfulness.  These carry a connotation of action, of a series of decisions.  "Faith" in English has come to mean something that happens to you.  "Fidelity" and "faithfulness" still mean something you choose daily — like hope and charity.

    I'm also taken, today, by

    While we live we are constantly being delivered to death…

    and, along with it, the line a few paragraphs later that goes

    We do not lose heart, because our inner being is renewed each day even though our body is being destroyed at the same time.

    Probably those lines were originally meant to encourage and strengthen people who are looking death right in the face.  I come at it from another point of view, at least now.  If we are healthy and feeling pretty good, it is possible to forget that "while we live we are constantly being delivered to death."  

    It's true, though.  The cells die every moment.   The collapse has been going on for a long time.

    If only my inner being could be renewed each day, as imperceptibly but steadily as my body is being destroyed.    Hope is, I think, believing that it can be so; faith is deciding to live as if we are certain.

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  • Perspectives on the “day of rest…”

    …in the online Chronicle of Higher Education. A professor of political science, a professor of anthropology, a lecturer in English, and several other academics write thoughtfully about “keeping Sabbath” in the context of their professional and personal lives. Some excerpts:

    For a few years now, I’ve been drawn toward paying more attention to sabbath observance. …Going to Mass and brunch, calling my family, then jumping right back into ordinary work just hasn’t been cutting it for me. Something’s been missing.

    What I’m really looking for is both a greater sense of connection and a greater awareness that, though my work is important (at least, I’d like to think so!), it isn’t so necessary that I can’t take one day away from it each week to enjoy life and to focus on the relationships and non-work activities that add greater meaning and depth to it.

    +++

    There are a total of 39 forbidden activities on Shabbat, and the rules are so complex that volumes and volumes of heavy Jewish tomes have been dedicated to it. However, the simple answer for what it takes to celebrate Shabbat properly is this: we cannot be involved in any creative activity. We cannot do things such as cook, use a phone, light a fire (including using anything electric), ride in a car, garden, draw, write, sew, or carry anything (even a tissue in our pocket) outside a “private area” such as a house.

    Even when I attend a conference or a THATCamp, I keep Shabbat. On the face of it, many would regard attending a technology conference without one’s computer to be a waste of time. However, I have discovered that spending the day talking to others and really paying attention to what they are saying as they describe a project has allowed me to focus better than if I were following-along with my computer.

    Shabbat is an amazing gift from G-d, a gift that I cherish more and more as I get older and my life becomes more and more technological. It’s a day away, a day dedicated to reflection and celebration of the gifts G-d has given us, and it keeps me balanced.

    +++

    At some point during college, I decided that I would extend my observance of a day of rest to include homework. It was a personal decision, and I’d say that it’s been one of the best that I’ve made in the last 15 years. No matter how much work I have (and like all of us, I frequently have too much), I’ve decided that I cannot and will not do it on my Sabbath. That means that I’ve sometimes got a lot to do to get ready to take this day “off,” but I’ve found my life to feel much more balanced and happy knowing that I have at least one day every week where I will get a break and can really focus on my family and other people.

    One of the difficulties of academia is the fact that our job is never over. There’s always another article you could read, another 750 words you could write, or some papers you could grade. But if we tell ourselves that we can’t do these things on a certain day or that we won’t work after 5pm, then we buy ourselves a chance to get the rest we so seldom will take on our own.

    +++

    If you’re observing a strict religious sabbath, as my grandparents did, you have to plan your household cooking, chores, and other tasks so as not to interfere with that code. If you’re attending religious services, you have to plan for appropriate dress, travel time, and so forth.

    If you’re creating a sabbath ritual for yourself, secular or spiritual, you need to figure out what counts—what your own guidelines are going to be for both what you will do and what you won’t do on your sabbath. And then you have to plan to make sure that you get your non-sabbath activities done beforehand so that you’re not tempted to give in and work through the day.

    +++

    Read the whole thing. The conversation was inspired by a short post at Lifehack (not Lifehacker) about the importance of taking a day of rest to avoid burnout, and that post is also worth reading. (It cuts through the fog of “but what counts as ‘work’ and what counts as ‘rest?’ with the fairly simple rule “[On your day of rest,] don’t do anything that feels like work.” A little harder for mothers to get away with this one, but it could be adapted.)

    I am particularly taken by the notion that to take a day of rest you have to plan ahead — arrange your life so that it all works out. It is sort of obvious that this is true — at minimum you have to make sure that the work you might otherwise do on your day of rest, you do at some other time. But even if it is obvious, and even if I pay lip service to desiring a day of rest, I haven’t adequately arranged my life to make room for one. Priorities have a way of outing themselves, don’t they?

     

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  • Beer for beginners, part IV: Porter, pilsner and not-quite-pilsner.

    (part I, part II, part III)

    The next time I went to the beer store, I took with me an index card with a list of porters and pilsners.  This turned out to be a bit of a funny combination, because they are, of course, very different styles of beer.  On the other hand, it was a nice pair to have in the house, because between the two of them they cover a lot of ground.  After all, I was checking these off my list of versatile beers.  Porter is said to be good with roasted or smoked food, sausages, blackened fish, meatloaf, steak, and (intriguingly) brownies or vanilla ice cream.  Pilsner is supposed to go with Indian or Vietnamese or Thai food, tinned sardines or kippers, salmon, shrimp, caviar, proscuitto or other ham, and mixed hors d'oeuvres. 

    + + + 

    Porter first.

    I came home with Samuel Smith's Taddy Porter and Fuller's London Porter, which are both brewed in the UK.  Little did I know that, at least according to the folks at Beer Advocate, I was carrying home excellent examples of the style.  I liked it:  sweeter, deeper, not hoppy; and Mark did too.  We compared them, and decided that Samuel Smith's is rounder, and Fuller's dryer; I liked Samuel Smith's, but it's more expensive. 

    That was all well and good and I was ready to check "porter" off my list, but we had one more thing to try:  this notion that porter was a perfect match for vanilla ice cream.  "We have some in the freezer," I said.  "Let's try it."

    "Weird," said Mark.  "It's like the beer milkshake in Travels with Charley."

    I scooped a bowl of our ordinary grocery-store vanilla ice cream for each of us and opened one of the bottles of the Fuller's, pouring it between two jelly glasses.  We took a bite of ice cream and washed it down with a sip of beer and went:

    "WOW."

    This was, to put it bluntly, a revolution.  The stuff went with vanilla ice cream the way that good strong espresso does, or hot fudge sauce.  Amazing.  It didn't take long for us to polish it off. 

    The next time, we experimented with a one-vessel version:  we made a porter-ice cream float, and a porter affogato (affogato is something you usually do with espresso — you pour it over vanilla ice cream and eat it with a spoon).  The porter-ice cream float was prettier in the glass (WATCH OUT FOR THE HEAD) but it felt like the beer-to-ice-cream ratio was too high.  We liked the affogato better — maybe even more than the espresso kind, as it doesn't melt the ice cream as fast.

    I'm telling you, the porter affogato is your next fancy-but-super-easy summer dessert.   The only thing it lacks is an appropriate garnish to make up for how ugly it is in the bowl.  Maybe a good English shortbread cookie would do the trick.  

    + + +

    The pilsners we brought back were basic examples of the style:  Pilsner Urquell (which is sort of the "original" pilsner) and Summit Pilsener, which is local and therefore fairly easy to find around here, sometimes at a discount or as part of a sampler pack.  I was familiar with the pilsner style and have had both beers before, but we wanted to compare them.  Both are good, and in fact they were very similar, but I thought Urquell was a little bit better.  Possibly I would not have been able to tell the difference had it been a blind tasting.

    On a second trip we brought home a single bottle of Czechvar, which is what the Czech Budweiser brewery has to call its Budvar when it sells it in the United States (go figure).  We decided it was fine but with so many pilsners out there, we would not seek it out again.  

    That same trip, Mark pointed out a variety 12-pack from Spaten, a Munich-based brewery whose beers are widely distributed in the United States.  "This has a hefeweizen in it — Franziskaner Weissbier – and it's on sale."   We took it home and decided it was indeed a good find.  It also included the doppelbock Optimator, another nice beer.  (I'm not ready to study doppelbocks yet, so I simply considered it a nice preview of the style.  Trying to focus here.)

    More interestingly for my purposes, the box included four bottles of Munich Premium Lager, which at first we took to be a type of pilsner.   The Brewmaster's Table reviews it in the same section as pilsners.  But on additional research, we realized that it is not a pilsner, but a related type called Helles, aka Munich Lager.  I was interested, because it reminded me of one of my favorite beers I'd had in the past few months, the local craft brew Hell from the deservingly trendy Twin Cities outfit, Surly Brewing.  (The name is a pun:  Surly's other beers have names like Furious and Cynic and Abrasive and Schadenfreude, and of course "hell" is German for "light" and the name of the style "helles" is related.)

    Surly Hell is supposed to be not a helles but a Zwickel, which is a bit hoppier, but there's a lot of overlap in the classification, and in any case the world of Helles/Zwickel/Keller biers is distinct from the world of pilsners.  After a few evenings spent in the company of Spaten Munich Premium Lager, plus a little Hell, I decided that Helles lager is the pilsner I've been waiting for my whole life.  

    And although that is not, on the whole, particularly insightful, I was excited to learn it.  First of all, it counts as something I've really learned, giving me so far two new things I didn't know before:

    1. Porter + vanilla ice cream = YUM
    2. When it comes to clear yellow beer, forget the pilsner and give me a Munich-style helles lager. 

    Second of all, since it's more obscure, it now gives me something to say whenever I want to sound like a genuine beer snob.  "Oh, I drink a pilsner now and then, but I much prefer the Munich breweries' take on that basic style."  

    I am planning to print out a list of top Helles lagers and carry it around for future reference.  You never know what you might meet in a restaurant.

    Next up:  Belgian fruited lambic and saison.

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  • Being a marketing trend.

    I'm not usually one to read and comment on fluffy "demographic/marketing trends" stories, but this one seemed on-topic for bearing blog.  Via Kara, blogger and author of Hot Sweaty Mamas:  Five Secrets to Life as a Fit Mom, we have a profile in the Wall Street Journal of a marketing niche:  "Don't Hate Her Because She Finds Time for Being Fit:  More Moms Squeeze in Workouts as 'Me Time.'"

    Drea McLarty, a 35-year-old mother of two, awoke before dawn to run nine miles on a recent Monday, then made breakfast for the family, did some errands and headed to the park for an hour of Pilates. Later that afternoon, she had a personal training session with a client.

    "I really just love to be active," says Ms. McLarty, of Santa Barbara, Calif. "It's very addicting."

    Ms. McLarty is one of the growing number of mothers who carve out time to maintain a high level of fitness. They are a far cry from the stereotype of the full-time homemaker as stressed out and starved for time to herself, seeking respite in a hot bath, the television or chocolate. They are also emerging as a tantalizing target for consumer-product marketers.

     The term "fit mom" as used in the article is apparently a marketing term for the type of person the athleticwear companies are targeting, rather than a term for athletically inclined mothers in general.  At least I hope so:

    Fit moms spend nearly every free minute working out, cross-training for triathlons and scheduling regular boot camps and yoga….Most fit moms have enough money so they don't have to work at full-time jobs, but not so much that they have full-time child care. 

    This, plus being data-thin, makes the article kind of annoying.   Not to mention this breathless style:

    [Ms. McLarty] spends a lot of time in her minivan, where the back seat folds down to make room for her supplies—wet wipes, a change of clothes, snacks and a yoga mat. 

    (This is why the author of the article thinks a mom needs to fold down the back seat of her minivan? Maybe she found a really good deal on wet wipes at Sam's Club.)

    But the elite mother-athletes are only the hook for this article.  Whenever the marketers identify a certain type of person as the target, you can be sure that they also want to sell their stuff to us lesser beings who merely aspire to be the sort of person who might spend nearly every free minute working out… or who just want to look like one.  

    I realize that the point of the article is to highlight rising sales of certain kinds of athletic apparel.  Although my hat's off to people who manage to sustain a serious training regimen while leading a busy life, I would hate to think that anyone might read this and think that you can't be a "fit mom" without spending every free minute at the gym.  I'm not at an elite level of fitness — I run 9-and-a-half-minute miles, not seven-and-a-quarter, and believe me that's a big difference — but I am at a level that is satisfactory to me, while still challenging enough to be interesting, at a time commitment that isn't hard for me to keep up as long as I make it a high priority.

    On one hand, it can be inspiring to read about mothers who manage to make it work — fitness at a high, time-consuming level.  

    On the other hand, an intense lifestyle like this can seem impossible, while a more moderate level of fitness (like what I enjoy) is within the reach of so many more individuals and still SO worth it.    One of my pet peeves is this idea that exercise should be bimodal:  either you should be satisfied with "walking, the best form of exercise," or you should be some kind of an exercise addict who works out like a professional athlete.  Not to diss walking or professional athletes, but it seems like for the great majority of healthy adults, shooting for something in the middle — light, but deliberate, daily exercise or (my pattern) vigorous exercise two to four times a week — would hit the sweet spot of beneficial and realistic.  But we just don't hear much about that.  

    Even though women like me — who are reasonably fit and kinda sorta hope that someday we might find the time to increase our treadmill time — might be the real driver of sales of Luna bars and maternity sports bras.  (Speaking of which:  I'll believe that clothing manufacturers are actually courting fit mothers when it's easy to find a supportive athletic nursing bra that really works.  I only know of two decent sports bras that have straps that open in front, and they are not marketed as nursing bras.  While we're at it, how about a real maternity lapsuit?)

    As an aside, the article ends with a list of tips for fitting a workout into a busy day of child care.  I was rather surprised not to see a tip along the lines of "Join a gym that has child care,"  even in an article that focuses on people who have discretionary income to spend on such a thing.  Maybe that's too obvious to count as a tip!

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  • It’s all Greek to an optical character recognition program. Well, Greek is, anyway.

    A couple of days ago Melanie commented that she'd gotten a weird image in the anti-spam verification box here:

    Seriously, my first captcha had Greek letters! I don't know how to do that on my keyboard. Was I supposed to transliterate to English?

    I've never seen Greek letters, but the question led me to idly click around to find out exactly what the captcha program, which is called reCAPTCHA, is doing.  I had a vague memory that it was supposed to be using the human entries to digitize scanned content, but I didn't know how it worked and had wondered:  if the content hasn't been digitized yet, how does it know if your entry is correct?

    The explanation is on the reCAPTCHA website and also in a 2008 article that appeared in Science (pdf), and it explains why you get two words.  

    • One of the two words is already known to the software, and it serves as the shibboleth that proves you are human (which lets you post your comment) and verifies that you can probably decipher a distorted word in print. 
    • The other word is unknown to the software and represents a part of a scanned document that optical character recognition (OCR) has failed to decode satisfactorily. 

    Or, as the reCAPTCHA people put it,  

    Each new word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is given to a user in conjunction with another word for which the answer is already known. The user is then asked to read both words. If they solve the one for which the answer is known, the system assumes their answer is correct for the new one. The system then gives the new image to a number of other people to determine, with higher confidence, whether the original answer was correct.

    There, isn't that interesting?  And this explains how Greek letters made it in, probably via one of the unknown words:  the reason OCR couldn't recognize it wasn't because it was distorted, but because it was in the Greek alphabet.

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  • Six degrees to cupcakes.

    When I was pregnant with my second child, I read a simple line in a parenting book (Becky Bailey, Easy to Love, Difficult to Discipline) that resonated with me: 

    "In any given moment, ask yourself, do you want to be special, or do you want to connect?"  

    As a child and adolescent, I had wanted to be special more than anything, and I was growing tired of it.   More and more, I desired to make real connections.   But I hadn't seen until then that specialness and connectedness are in tension, that to emphasize one is necessarily to de-emphasize the other, and that in any moment we have the opportunity to make the choice between them.

    The book goes on to say:

    Unity … comes from letting go of the need to compare oneself to others, and choosing instead to connect through a sense of equality.

    I understand that, and the implied tradeoffs, much better now.

    + + +

     I like that it is phrased as a question, because it isn't as if connectedness is always to be prized over specialness; and there's a bit of a circularity to it, because one of the things that makes each person particular  — unique — "special" — is the particular combination of connections he has made.  

    One example: it's precisely because of my connections with my family members that I am irreplaceable to each of them.  I am a particular person — "Mom" — to each of my children, the only mom they have, and my husband's only wife.  Connection and "specialness" are bound up.

    Another example:  It's because of their unique connections with different "networks" that certain highly connected people hold together entire communities.   Malcolm Gladwell writes about this topic in his book The Tipping Point.  Are you familiar with the saying "six degrees of separation?"  The idea that every person is connected to every other person on the globe by a chain of introduction ("I know someone who knows someone who knows someone…") that's on average only six people long?  Many researchers, most famously Stephen Milgram, have attempted to measure interconnectedness through correspondence experiments.  But it isn't just the length of the "chain," but the structure of connectedness of the whole, that is interesting.  Gladwell writes:

    The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts….Most of us don't have particularly broad and diverse groups of friends… In the six degrees of separation, not all degrees are equal.

    Social connections aren't spread out evenly.  They cluster:  most of us have many connections within small groups that share lots of connections.  But here and there are individuals who tie those clusters together — people who have connections to many different clusters.   By necessity, having many diverse connections mean that most of the connections aren't particularly strong.  (Gladwell says that such "connectors" have "mastered what sociologists call the 'weak tie,' a friendly yet casual social connection.  On Gladwell's web page is reprinted a brief excerpt,"The Connectors," that introduces the concept.)  But even the most highly connected people probably have a few very strong, prized connections with a few select and dear friends.  At least, that seems to be true about the connectors I know.

    + + +

    Connectors wouldn't be connectors, wouldn't tie so many people together, if they weren't willing to be "special" in the sense that in each cluster they're the one person who stands out because, well, they know so many people outside the cluster.  So their numerous weak ties aren't to be disparaged:  they are extremely valuable.

    + + +

    When I stepped back from most work other than directly meeting my family's needs, it was kind of like saying to the world:  I'm going to focus my energy on building a few connections, and reinforcing them heavily, rather than on making numerous connections that, because numerous, can't be strong.  

    And that's what I do.  I have the chance to carefully supervise the connections between each child and his siblings, between these children and a few close friends, between the children and my friends and my friends' children, between my friends' children and me.  I have time to cultivate a few friendships of my own, too.   The networks my kids and I move in are small but connection-dense.   

     I do it this way not because I think it's better to have fewer, stronger connections than to be "well-connected" — although I am learning to prefer it — but because I think it's the kind of connectivity I'm better suited to help build.  I'm not worried that they won't be able to branch out more later.  They have time to develop a connectivity that is their own, once out of my shadow; I'm doing it for myself now, after all, at age thirty-seven, so why not they?

    + + +

    But on second thought, I am a sort of connector, too.  I work to build the connections for my family in our small cluster, but the nature of being a parent is that you are a bridge to connect your family to the outside world:  a gatekeeper, if you will.  It's a small connection, but to those young people, it is an artery.

    + + +

    There's another, virtual way of being a connector, and homeschooling is really the perfect outlet for it.  Ever dealing better with ideas than with people, I like moving in multiple mental worlds, and enjoying the surprising connections between them.   I like having a deep knowledge of engineering and also of homemaking.  I like being a scientist (well, sort of) and a theist.  I like being ridiculously unclassifiable on any political spectrum, which, I think, comes with the territory of examined Catholicism.  I like the challenge of standing in the middle between two groups that are foreign to each other — not because I refuse to commit to membership in or agreement with either group, but because I like to thoroughly understand the perspectives of both — and attempting to translate.  This is the kind of connection I like to make, and I think I am not bad at it, when I get the chance.  (At least in writing.  Never at parties.)

    + + +

    I think maybe the level of connection one creates is part of  one's vocation, and so unique; after all, connections create responsibilities, and fulfilling these is what vocation is all about.   Perhaps those "connectors" among us, tying the clusters together with a mass of weak links, have a greater impact than the rest — at least when they work to keep the links active.  A greater responsibility, even?  Maybe. 

    Here's a little story about the value of being multiply connected, and a lesson that no matter what kind of connectivity we enjoy, we always have the choice to reinforce those connections — to send a little jolt of energy across a gap, so to speak — and that when we do send that jolt along, it can travel quite far. 

    A couple of days ago I wrote about calling Poison Control from camp when my child got tree sap in her eye.  I was happy because they exist and because they give good advice; in a different universe where PCC did not exist or was run by lawyers, my vacation would have been ruined.   I believe I wrote something along the lines of "YAY POISON CONTROL.  I wish I could send you cupcakes."

    Now, I may not be a connector in this particular field, but:

    1. commenter/reader/three-dimensional contact ChristyP is, and she forwarded my blog post to 
    2. a colleague who directs a poison control center in her state.   The colleague forwarded the email to
    3.  the managing director of my local poison control center, with whom she was apparently on a first-name basis.    The managing director shared the story with 
    4. the VP of professional and support services of the medical center that hosts the poison control center.  And that vice president surprised
    5. "Dustin," the poison information provider who took my call, with 
    6. a tray of cupcakes.

    Count 'em, folks!    Too bad I didn't ask for Champagne!

    But what's really great about this is the reminder that, no matter how numerous or even how weak the connections we control may be, no matter whether they are between our own family members or across town, we often get a chance to pass a little something along.  It may come to nothing, or it may "merely" make someone's day more interesting, or  – who knows?  It could pay back far in the future.  I think I will think of this story often when those little chances make themselves known.

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    7 comments on Six degrees to cupcakes.

  • Knowing what to say: Another camp story.

    Last week at camp, I met a family with whom, it turned out, I had a coincidental connection.

    I met them for the first time at "S'mores and Singalong Night," and was privately amused at the dad's protest after a counselor broke the sad news that not only were we not going to sing "Tom Dooley," but that "Tom Dooley" had, in fact, been excised from the camp song book due to inappropriate lyrics.  A day or two later, while making small talk with him in the breakfast line over the heads of our seven-through-nine-year-olds, we discovered that we had something in common.

    The connection was this:  Both the mother and the father had done their graduate work in the same engineering department at the same university from which I got my doctoral degree.  They had finished less than a year before I arrived to begin my Ph.D., but they had returned a few years later so that he could join the faculty of another department in the same college.  She had taken a job at a local company, undoubtedly with other people I know from those graduate school days.  I had never met him after he became a professor, but of course we knew many of the same people; he'd served on the thesis committee for at least one of my FB friends, and probably more.

    Meeting someone with whom I have a professional connection is a rare these days, and that alone made the conversation notable.  

    + + +

    But the conversation was notable (to me) because of another event, which occurred just a few minutes in — just as we got to the front of the serving line and were picking up our plates — and which nearly passed by without my even noticing.

    "You graduated only eight years ago?" he asked me.  "And your advisor was S___?  I can't believe I never ran into you!"

    "Well, I wasn't in the building very much," I explained.  "I had my first baby when I was a fourth-year, and after that my heart wasn't really in it anymore, so I went part-time.  I decided to finish up as quickly as I could so I could focus on being a mom."

    He nodded with interest.  "Well, who was on your thesis committee?  Did you ever know Dr. ____?  How about my student M___ — he finished around the time you did?"

    And so forth and so on.  I introduced him to Mark when we got back to the table with our plates.  The professor turned out to be a friendly and interesting dinner companion.  Although, unfortunately, I did not get a chance to talk to his wife, Mark and I had a lively conversation with him over a couple of meals in the dining hall about various engineering-college-related topics, like grade inflation and professor rating.  Mark serves on a departmental industrial advisory board at a different university, so it's a topic of professional interest to him too.  At the end of the week we exchanged contacts, and perhaps we will meet again.

    + + +

    Here is why this was a milestone:  Because my explanation came right out of my mouth, concisely and truthfully, without any sort of hesitation or trepidation or drama.   

    You know, I'm truly happy doing what I do.  I am also grateful for the education and training I had, which are part of who I am and which formed the perspective I bring to my work — past, present, and future.   I have little difficulty expressing that satisfaction within my circles — to those who know something about living a home-based vocation; or to people who know me well enough to know the way I attack things, which is the way I have always attacked them, albeit with (I hope) a little more maturity and wisdom every year.

    Still, I sometimes stumble over the "so what do you do?" when it comes from strangers, or the "so what do you do now?" when it comes from someone I knew once (back when I coulda been a contender instead of a bum).  

    It isn't that I dread the possible responses — and don't we all know the kinds of responses I'm talking about? (The ones that amount to It must be so nice for you to be a bum.) I mean, I can take it.   But knowing me, I am quite likely to say something unhelpful.  And by "something unhelpful," I should add, I do not mean "devastatingly witty." 

    So I sometimes overthink what I am going to say when people ask me what I do.

    But this time, it came out as if it were natural and normal and true to say who I am, what I do, and why.  And — perhaps not coincidentally — the conversation continued as if what I said was a natural and normal thing to hear.

    Which should not, of course, be pleasantly surprising, because it should not be surprising at all.   Nevertheless, I mark it.

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    1 comment on Knowing what to say: Another camp story.

  • Service when you need it: a camp story.

    My family and I spent last week up at YMCA Camp du Nord, north of Ely, Minnesota, on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW).  

    (I've written about this place before, and it's been profiled here in the Star Tribune, which named it Best Family Vacation in Minnesota this year.  If you have ever thought that a week among the pines and firs and birches and aspens of northern Minnesota, with lots of canoeing and kayaking and fishing and hiking — and a couple of hours each day free while the kids are in age-group activities — sounds like a great place for your family, I don't think you could do better than here.)

    Normally I would post pictures, but I didn't take any.  Not a single one.  I was too busy enjoying myself.  My 5yo daughter learned to paddle her own kayak, my 2yo son developed his own entourage of eight-year-old girls, my eight-year-old son discovered that he has an aptitude for slacklining, and my eleven-year-old — well, I'm not sure exactly what my eleven-year-old was up to all week, and that is what he loves about the place — he gets to wander around and do his own thing, something that I wish he had more of but can never quite make happen at home.

    The main reason I didn't take pictures is that I usually do it with my cell phone.  But this year I didn't bother carrying my phone around with me.

    In fact I had zero contact with phones or the Internet the entire week, with one notable exception.

    + + +

    On one past trip to the camp, during Nature Notes, the older boys had learned a Cool Science Trick, a handy combination of botany and physical chemistry.   The naturalist showed the children how to scrape oozing tree-sap onto one end of a stick or a chip of wood, and throw the chip of wood into the lake.  This causes the wood chip to zoom along the surface of the water, powered by the difference in surface tension between the clean water in front of the wood chip and the miniature oil slick of organic compounds — think turpentine-ish stuff — that spreads out from the blob of sap behind it.  

    The tremendous fun that could be had in the making of "sap boats" has grown in my family, in legends passed down from older to younger siblings, and in tales told with great enthusiasm to numerous other relatives who innocently asked "So what did you do this summer?"  So the stage was set.  The minute that the children were done with their job of ferrying items from car to cabin, all four of them began clamoring to go down to the lake and make sap boats.  We sent the three big ones off and breathed a sigh of relief that we could begin throwing together some dinner and unpacking bedding.

    Moments later I heard my daughter screaming, and getting louder and louder.  I turned and through the window saw her running as fast as she could toward the cabin, wailing and screaming, with one hand clamped over her eye, followed closely behind by her big brothers.   "She got sap in her eye!" called one of the boys, and while Mark went out to pick her up and carry her in I picked up the cell phone.

     It's generally hard to get a consistent cell signal unless you cross the road and hike out on the North Arm Trails (here's the U. S. Forest Service map)  to "Old Baldy," a higher, rocky point.  Mine — which has Poison Control on speed dial — didn't get a signal, but I copied the number into Mark's iPhone and went outside the cabin and managed to get through just that one time.

    May I just sing the praises of the Poison Control people again?  They are so helpful.  It's like they never heard of a lawyer.  You ask them for medical advice, and they give appropriate medical advice, with no CYA padding and no guilt and no "take them to the emergency room just in case."  YAY POISON CONTROL.  I wish I could send you cupcakes.

    Anyway, they advised us to flush her eye out for five minutes, which we did with a plastic measuring cup at the sink — this was not fun as she spent the whole time screaming "I'M BETTER NOW PLEASE PUT ME DOWN PLEASE," but we did figure out that you can overcome the squeeze-your-eyes-shut reflex a bit by instructing her not to keep her eye open but to blink rapidly and continuously under the water.  Then we were supposed to call back after forty minutes to report how the eye felt and looked (much better) and after that were advised to call back in the morning only if it didn't feel perfectly fine.

    So we were all done with that OR SO WE THOUGHT.  About twenty minutes later the sound of screaming from my eight-year-old son let us know that he, too, had managed to get tree sap in his eye.  Fortunately, we were all prepared this time, and he is kind of the family stoic, so we got his eye flushed with less drama.

    After that Mark instituted a NO HANDLING TREE SAP WITHOUT EYE PROTECTION policy.  Sunglasses will do in a pinch — at least they keep you from absentmindedly rubbing your eyes while you work.

    + + +

    1-800-222-1222.  Put it in your phone and memorize it.  Seriously, you never know.  If it weren't for them, we might have driven forty-five minutes back to the emergency room in Ely.

    Anyway, that was the only cell phone signal I got for a whole week (though, to be sure, I didn't get around to hiking up to Old Baldy).

     

     

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    5 comments on Service when you need it: a camp story.

  • Non-evidence-based style.

    My friend M. has been deep in the books, trying to design and redesign a good homeschooling environment for her eight-year-old son who is diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, and who really needs quite intense attention.  She is looking at various styles of teaching and how they are shown to work with real children.

    She came to me a few days ago saying (I'm paraphrasing):  "You know what's really amazing about the so-called 'classical model of homeschooling?'  So many homeschoolers put so much stock in it — in this idea that the medieval trivium corresponds to three stages of child development — but there isn't really any evidence for it at all!  If you go tracing back the claims that people make about classical homeschooling, they all go back to just one source –"

    "'The Lost Tools of Learning,'" I said.  "The essay by Dorothy Sayers."

    "…And, well, she just made it up!  She doesn't claim to know anything about how children develop.  It's just her idea.  But this entire industry has sprung up to support classical homeschooling, as if there was any evidence that designing a school the way she imagines it is something that really produces good outcomes.  There isn't any evidence.  And of course the medieval trivium wasn't at all like the homeschooling trivium that people talk about.  There's no evidence that children ever were taught the way she describes."

    I thought for a moment how to respond.  "I think that the essay provides a useful organizing principle," I ventured.  "No more than that."  I did have to defend myself a little bit!

    And I do think that the organizing principle behind "The Lost Tools of Learning" is so useful that I maintain it's part of the "homeschooler's canon" of educational philosophy.  

    + + +

    But M.'s reminder is useful, too — that Sayers' essay is just that:  an opinion piece.  After all, I do go around telling other homeschoolers, when I need to, that I am "oh, sort of a classical homeschooler, with a little Charlotte Mason thrown in."  Really, this is just a piece of code, shorthand for what I am not:  I am not an unschooler, I am not a school-in-a-box-er, I am not entirely disorganized (I have some kind of plan), and, well, I'm not entirely "evidence-based."  

    (Even the Charlotte Mason reference is really cheating.  I've never actually read any serious books by or about Charlotte Mason.  That reference is code for "I like making my kids tell back what they've learned, and I tried keeping a nature journal for a while.")

    One careful reading of Sayers' essay will show you that she never intended her imaginary school to be set up as a real place.  She breezily assumes ideal and impossible conditions:

    Let us amuse ourselves by imagining that such progressive retrogression is possible. Let us make a clean sweep of all educational authorities, and furnish ourselves with a nice little school of boys and girls whom we may experimentally equip for the intellectual conflict along lines chosen by ourselves. We will endow them with exceptionally docile parents; we will staff our school with teachers who are themselves perfectly familiar with the aims and methods of the Trivium; we will have our building and staff large enough to allow our classes to be small enough for adequate handling; and we will postulate a Board of Examiners willing and qualified to test the products we turn out. Thus prepared, we will attempt to sketch out a syllabus–a modern Trivium "with modifications" and we will see where we get to.

    But first: what age shall the children be? Well, if one is to educate them on novel lines, it will be better that they should have nothing to unlearn; besides, one cannot begin a good thing too early, and the Trivium is by its nature not learning, but a preparation for learning. We will, therefore, "catch 'em young," requiring of our pupils only that they shall be able to read, write, and cipher.

    Did you catch that bit — that at the start of her "school" the children have already been taught to read, write, and do arithmetic?  We're on our own for that part, homeschoolers.

    Sayers' imaginary school is not, actually, a plan (and she takes pain to point this out).  Nor is it a reconstruction of the medieval trivium in any way — significantly, she stresses, "It does not matter, for the moment, whether it [the trivium] was devised for small children or for older students, or how long people were supposed to take over it."

    No, this school she describes is a rhetorical device.  The point of the description is to create vivid pictures in the readers' minds, of children arguing, or finding Cassiopeia in the night sky, or examining portraits of the Kings of England, or carefully studying maps.  This is just an illustration to motivate readers to hear and accept her philosophy of education, which she emphasizes by making it the very last sentence of the essay:

    For the sole true end of education is simply this: to teach men how to learn for themselves; and whatever instruction fails to do this is effort spent in vain.

    This is a philosophy that appeals to me, and it is why I go around telling people that I am a "classical homeschooler."  Not because I think my homeschool should be split up into Grammar and Rhetoric and Dialectic (although I sometimes use those terms to describe the level of mental process that is engaged by a particular book or curriculum).  I tell people I am a "classical homeschooler" because I believe my job is to teach my kids how to teach themselves.

    + + +

    Which brings me to the problem of evidence-based teaching.  Evidence is overrated.

    If I say "Evidence is overrated," you should know I am speaking tongue in cheek.  I am trained as an engineer and as a scientist, and even though I abandoned that life in its early stages, its inner life has not abandoned me:  I can never lose the engineer's problem-attacking method, nor the scientist's reflexes to observe, test, and revise.  

    No, what I really mean is that the marshalled evidence often overemphasizes one kind of data to the exclusion of another kind of data that, depending on the application, may be more important.  The distinction between the two kinds of data:  that drawn from large groups and that drawn from individuals.

    Data drawn from large groups can be usefully applied to help individuals, it's true.  Let's imagine an experiemental school — would that schools would actually do this — in which two methods for teaching arithmetic are to be evaluated.  Children are randomly assigned to two classrooms, one in which the arithmetic skills are taught via method A, and one in which the teacher uses method B  to teach the same skills.  After a suitable time, the children are evaluated, and method A comes out ahead:  perhaps more students in classroom A have achieved a certain minimum competency, or perhaps the average score of students in that classroom is significantly higher than the average in classroom B.   Perhaps A outperforms B by both metrics.  If the test is repeated over different schools and different populations, and if A consistently outperforms B, that would certainly be a strong argument for teaching with method A instead of method B.  I would gladly support this kind of approach to curriculum selection in my local public schools, who are, after all, in the business of educating large groups.

    However, just because A is the better method overall does not mean it is the better method for every child in the class.  Imagine there is one particular child — let's call him Jacob — who responds better, in a critical way, to method B.  It's not that Jacob was one of the top kids in classroom B — no, let's be honest, most of the "top kids" in classroom B would also have been "top" in classroom A, because every classroom contains at least a few kids who are going to absorb material no matter how you throw it at them.  No, this boy was on the margins:  Jacob was one of those who achieved competency in classroom B, did well enough.  But when the classrooms all switched to the A method — the method that was proved superior by the average-score metric and by the number-achieving-minimum-competency metric — Jacob did not succeed, did not achieve competency.  More of his classmates will succeed in the A environment, and that is good for them, and good for the school, and good for the teachers, probably.  It does not help him.

    I am not, mind you, saying that the evidence drawn from large groups is unhelpful for the large groups.  I do think schools should use data to shape their curriculum, because that is the job of the schools.  I just want to point out that the schools have one job — to teach the large groups — and Jacob's parents have another — to teach Jacob.  

    This is, to me, the distinction that gives meaning to the notion that education of children is primarily the responsibility of their parents.  It is reflected in Minnesota law, at least:   Our state's constitution stipulates that the legislature shall establish a "general and uniform" system of public schools; "uniform" is supposed to provide for equal and fair access to schooling, and that is commendable and appropriate for government schools.  The statutes specify this:  "The parent of a child is primarily responsible for assuring that the child acquires knowledge and skills that are essential for effective citizenship."

    My point:  You use large-group evidence to design approaches that are aimed at large groups.  If your job is to teach Classroom B, you use what you've learned from metrics that measure Classroom B.  But if your job is to teach Jacob – and that, mind you, is not legally our state's job, nor a single classroom teacher's job, nor can it be — it is Jacob's parents' job – then you have to give primary weight to evidence drawn from Jacob and not to that drawn from his classmates.

    + + +

    I derive a lot of inspiration from Dorothy Sayers' opinion piece, even though it is not evidence-based.  Sayers never thought that people would try to copy the imaginary school she described, and I don't either.  I follow her example — not by trying to create in my home the school that she imagined — but by trying to create in my home the school that I  imagine.  

    I consider the problem that life has posed me — and I frame it and sketch it out as How will I teach my children to teach themselves?  I make assumptions, I list my constraints, I weigh costs against likely benefits, I approximate when necessary, and in the end I do what I can with what I have.

    I make a guess — this particular sort of curriculum will interest my eleven-year-old, or arranging the school desks in that particular way will keep my eight- and five-year-olds from fighting; I try it out; I check to see if my eleven-year-old is engaged in his work, I listen to see if the squabbles have diminished; I revise my hypothesis, I try again.

    + + +

    There is another thing to weigh, too — and it is sort of outside the evidence of what sort of methods produce academic excellence.  Because academic achievement is not, actually, central to what I am trying to do here (although it's very easy to forget that, because academic achievement is so much more easily measured, and because the culture values it, and I am swayed by culture).  

    What I am supposed to be doing is forming human beings who are honest, fair, kind, and wise, who have a firm understanding of their own value and of the value of other human persons, who recognize their direct responsibilities and carry them out.   And no amount of evidence of academic achievement should entice me to apply a method that undermines any of these.

    Meanwhile, I am supposed to be forming myself in honesty, fairness, kindness, and wisdom — and if I somehow form my children in ways that deteriorate my own character, I'm equally wrong.   

     To put it bluntly, if by daily beatings or regular bribes I could ensure my child a perfect SAT score, that wouldn't mean I should do it.

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    Large-group evidence based on large-group metrics will only take you so far.  It isn't useless:  it's just that it is useful for purposes different from mine.  (I can, of course, use it for my own purposes:  what's good for the group may be the best thing to try first, before tweaking to suit the individual.)    This is true about education, but lots of other things too:  taking care of your health, disciplining children, deciding what sort of community to live in, deciding whom to spend time with.  Sometimes "what works" is what matters; other times it's far more important to find something you can live with, whether it "works" or not; most often it is a matter of balancing both.

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  • “Hacking for Solidarity.”

    Interesting history post at the Engineering Ethics Blog:

    During the 1980s, the Communist government of Poland imposed martial law and rigidly suppressed and controlled speech. All media outlets, including radio and TV, were under government supervision. As the Solidarity movement grew, however, a group of radio and television engineers joined with other technical types (mainly university professors) to do (what we would term today) hacking of the official radio and TV networks. Pretty soon after that, TV-watching Poles began to see images of things like the words of the national anthem superimposed on the video feed of dull official programs. Now and then, the audio of the TV channel would give way to music of the national anthem, a joke, or some popular song that had nothing to do with the official program. At other times, Poles listening to their radios began to receive signals from “pirate” radio stations broadcasting information that the government did not want them to hear.

    The content of the messages sent by what came to be called “Radio Solidarity” was not as significant as the mere fact that somebody, somewhere, was messing with the government’s system, and could get away with it.

    Read the rest.

     

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