I am … unhindered by talent

We just returned from a wonderful three week visit to the UK. We spent most of the time with WeatherGirl’s mum, who we hadn’t seen for a few years, so that was really cool. We also squeezed in a bunch of short visits:

• Helmshore Mills Textile Museum. A neat little museum of important technologies in the early industrial revolution.
• Colchester. Thanks to Riccardo and Caterina for being such great hosts, and to Bill and Chris for a fun day of scientific discussion and contemplation.
• A nice visit with WeatherGirl’s brother.
• Stratford upon Avon. The birthplace of Shakespeare (and his home for significant parts of his life) and a neat city to hang out in. We also saw Twelfth night at the Royal Shakespeare, which was really cool.
• Raddlebarn School. This was where Sub-Evil Boy went to school when we lived in Birmingham (2000-2001). It was the first time he’d seen those kids since we left four years ago, and was one of the last chances to see them as a group as they’ll scatter off to different secondary schools in a few months.
• Isle of Wight. WeatherGirl’s mum’s family comes from the Isle, and WeatherGirl’s great aunt Kath still lives there. We hadn’t seen her in 8(?) years, and WeatherGirl’s mum hadn’t been back to the island in a decade or two, so it was nice to go back.
• Winchester. A nice day with a friend of WeatherGirl’s seeing the great cathedral and the beautiful town.

Whew! I’m tired just thinking about it. There will be more on many of these things (including pointers to photos) over the next few days as we adapt to our return.

Huge thanks to Matthew and Nancy and Cheryl for keeping our evil cats feed and watered while we were away. Also huge thanks to Tom and Roxann for helping us avoid 3 weeks of parking charges in the Cities and letting us crash at their place last night when we so desparately needed it!

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Michelle Francl (via Geeky Mom via New Kid on the Hallway) has an interesting short piece on “Hidden women of science”, namely the stay-at-home wives that are crucial to the success of so many of the Men Of Science.

A recent look at Princeton’s cadre of science faculty … reveals that the majority of male faculty enjoy a stay at home spouse. None of the female science faculty are so blessed.

WeatherGirl was trained as a scientist (her degree’s in computer science), but gave that up over a decade ago and focusses now on art and writing and being a spectacularly cool mum to Sub-Evil Boy and keeping my universe in one piece at home. There is absolutely no question that Sub-Evil and I would both be vastly worse off without her, and any accomplishment of mine (small as they may be) must have it’s credit shared. The number of hours I haven’t spent doing laundry and paying bills because she does those things is huge, and if I spend even a fraction of those hours on Officially Productive things like course planning or grading or research then she has to be recognized as crucial to the venture.

One thing I wish we could figure out is how to use one of my sabbatical years to focus on her interests, perhaps going someplace special where she could do art and I could do laundry. The money always gets complex, though, as a really productive research year for me helps pay bills, and there’s not likely to be any money in a really productive year of art for her. Sigh.

So hats off to the hidden women of science (and, of course, the hidden women behind every male-dominated field, i.e., damn near everything).

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In their excellent song “A day in space”, Ballboy makes the case for spending a windfall million quid on a day in space:

And then I say
“What better place could you go to than space?
What’s a better holiday than that?
Think about lying there in your 100’s,
110 or whatever,
looking back on your life and thinking, well,
what did I actually do?
What did I actually achieve?
Oh, yeah, I saw the pyramids.
Big deal.
You can apparently see those from space anyway.
You see all the rest of the blue and green globe
twisting and turning below you.
You can see the sun lighting up the moon,
feel the stars shining down upon your back.
You don’t get that in Egypt,
and you don’t get that in the pyramids,
and you don’t get that by pissing away your million pounds
on something everyone else can do
if they save up long enough.

If presented with a £1M, I’m pretty sure we’d do the safe thing, socking most of it away to ensure Sub-Evil Boy’s college education and our happy (and perhaps early) retirement. I suspect we would travel a lot more, but we’d be much more likely to spend extended periods in Florence than a day in space. And then there’s be the neat opportunities for charitable giving, as well as nifty consumer electronics to feed WeatherGirl’s habit (and help prop up Our Fearless Leader’s U.S. economy).

If I was totally unattached, the idea of a day in space would probably sound more appealing. I’m not, though, and it would have to be a family thing (which is a cool thing to look back on when I’m 110). For now, I think family time works better on the surface than in space. The possibilities of (incredibly expensive) “space tourism” are becoming sufficiently real, though, that the government is now starting the regulatory wheels, leading to the predictable clash with those who wish to profit from people’s desire to see “the blue and green globe twisting and turning below”.

So what would you do with a £1M?

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Several weeks ago, the newly formed local Art Boosters organization (formed to raise money, awareness, support, etc., for the arts in the local school system) had a cool fund raising event with lots of live performances, games, and the opportunity for me to buy nifty old vinyl to play on my nifty new turntable. As part of that someone donated a ton of lollipop’s to sell, and they ended up with quite a few leftovers (they donated a lot).

WeatherGirl got all clever and decided to continue to raise money by engaging computer science students’ legendary fondness for corn syrup. A big bag was placed in the CSci labs with a cup and a sign explaining the deal, and sure enough she sold out the whole lot speedy quick. On a completely honor system, she/they raised $26.45, and she was only short a nickle.

Pretty cool, eh?

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Since I went on yesterday about Not the end of the world, I thought I should mention briefly that the book that Sub-Evil Boy and I just finished (thereby opening up the option of reading Not the end of the world) was pretty good.

The book in question was The amulet of Samarkand, the first in the Bartimaeus Trilogy. Bartimaeus is a fiesty djinni summoned by Nathaniel, a young magician-in-training in an alternate universe London. Unlike the Harry Potter universe, where the ability to use magic is a gift one is born with (or not, for us muggles), here magicians are trained by taking/buying young children from their families and raising/training them in magician households. The governmental structure is vaguely similar to the current system (Ministers of departments and the Prime Minister at the top), but with magicians in all the ministerial positions going well back in time (Disraeli and Gladstone were magicians, apparently). This creates a strong social class system, where the magicians are “the Good and the Great” and the rest are (just) “commoners”, and I suspect that much of the second (and perhaps third) book will hinge on that tension.

Nathaniel is a high precocious fellow, and summons a very powerful djinni in a fit of spite. They then have many exciting adventures before winning the day (in a manner of speaking) and setting the stage for the next book. It’s not high art, but it’s fun and addresses some significant issues without beating you about the head and shoulders with them. Probably more substantive than the Artemis Fowl books (which are major faves of Sub-Evil, and which I also enjoyed), but hard to say at this point how they’d compare in terms of depth and development to the Harry Potter books.

The second in this series (The Golem’s eye) is out, but still in hardback, and the third is yet to be published. Sub-Evil’s keen to read more, though, and I look forward to it.

Also, it’s pretty clear that Sub-Evil isn’t going to press on with Not the end of the world. I’m quite taken with it, though, and will read it on my own.

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Sub-Evil Boy and I have just started Not the end of the world by Geraldine McCaughrean. The opening’s pretty dark (more below) so we may quit this and try something else (which is perhaps a shame, because it seems to have some real potential).

One good thing to come out of it, though, is Sub-Evil’s excellent observation that only taking two of each creature wasn’t the brightest plan because “What if those two didn’t want to mate later?”. Obviously his exposure to his aunt’s interest in and work on animal behavior, conservation, captive breeding, and reintroduction, has left it’s (good) mark.

As to the book, McCaughrean explores the tricky problems of the reality of standing by while the rest of the human population drowns around you, begging for aid and mercy, and then starting the human race over again. A striking example from early on:

Hands were clinging to the hull, the hands of swimmers who had somehow managed to find a grip on the rough timber … Fearless, placable as ever, Shem swung out from the ship’s rail by one hand, wielding his stave, dislodging people from the hull in the same way you might swat horseflies…

Not surprisingly, Sub-Evil found this and similar passages pretty tough, especially as bed-time reading. It’s not the bulk of the book, though. The death of the rest of the human race is complete within the first 30 pages of a 180 page book, but still it’s tough going, with even Timna herself pointing out

It should have been over in a flash. If it had to happen, it should have been quickly over… If it had to happen, then all life ought to have been extinguished in an instant, like a candle flame pinched out. But people are so resilient. They put up such a struggle.

The writing’s quite good and reads aloud almost like poetry, although not always as carefully crafted and edited as poetry would be. The ideas are quite striking, with all manner of rich parallels to our world and lives and strong (if perhaps overly modern) commentary. Timna (mentioned above), for example is an introduced character, the daughter of Noah who knows even in her life that the men get all the glory and*

They are the only ones who will be mentioned a hundred years from now when people tell our story. I know I won’t figure.

I’ll end with this question from Timna to her mother, which has wonderful parallels to the common worries today of how we balance human jobs and lives against the loss of creatures and species:

‘No, I meant … If it weren’t for the animals, we could have picked up so many. So many people, I mean. Why did they have to … ?’

It’s an interesting start, and I suspect I may finish it on my own even if Sub-Evil doesn’t want to press on.

*And who’s actually on board according to the King James version?

And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.

In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah’s wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark;

They, and every beast after his kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and every fowl after his kind, every bird of every sort.

Four women, all as nameless as “every beast”. Sigh.

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