A Weblog

Thursday was one of those grey days, when the ceiling hangs very low and the clouds rather than the grass seems to come up from the ground. I relish these days. On my way to work, to Leverett, I watched the Charles misting as I drove. The winter wouldn’t be so bad if we had more days like these, or, if we had snow.

A moment ago a few flakes teased my winter sensibilities. They have since stopped. The heat was shut off for the break, and I have bundled up in a coat, scarf, and floppy hat. Rather than read math, which is what I had intended to do today, I picked up Gordon S. Wood’s short history of the The American Revolution again. I’ll put it down at the end of the chapter.

The history got me thinking. It’s something I would read to my children, should I someday be allowed to raise children, before tucking them into bed. My father, after all, would cycle between a library of books written to supplement Sesame Street and the Bible. At least the language Wood uses is more tractable than that in King James. But then, and here’s the thinking part, I thought about my father’s reading me the Bible and whether I would do the same. You see, there are two competing forces: on the one hand, I think that religion is a very grown-up affair. Its practitioners should demonstrate an informed faith [something I don't really believe I have, actually], and such an education requires a mature mind. Really, Piaget would back me up. So most children simply aren’t even biologically equipped to process the implications of their religion, especially not my hypothetical ones. But then on the other hand, if I really believe, let’s say — and now we’re getting theoretical, not personal. My beliefs are more nuanced, but this works for the present — that Christianity is the key to salvation, then it only makes sense to introduce it to my children as soon as possible. And here St Augustine would back me up. And how can I, neither a celebrity developmental psychologist nor a Christian saint, hope to reconcile education with religion?

My friend Michelle offers an anecdote while I continue to ponder. Her childhood friend was born to Quaker parents. Faced with the same problem, they refused to bring their daughter to church until she was eighteen. She was welcomed to go to church with other families if she wished but not her own. Rather than denying my children church, and I confess I haven’t been regularly since I started college, I suppose I would supplement verses not only with discussion, but also with readings from historical exegeses and treatises from the medieval church. I better be careful before I say that we should present children with every possible vantage and then let them choose for themselves. Don’t worry, I don’t think that. But I do want them to be better read than me. And maybe I can use them as an excuse to read more.

If ever I do have kids, it’ll be terrifying. I’ll have to think about things I haven’t even thought to think about then. Good thing grad school is so long.

The longer I stay here, alone, at my father’s apartment, the more and more domestic I become. This morning I woke up and job-hunted a bit. It looks like I’ll tackle administrative positions at BU tomorrow. But for today, I volunteered to be an alumni interviewer. There’s a good chance they have enough interviewers in my area, but it couldn’t hurt to ask. Intermix everything I’ve said with a little math, then add a good solid hour and a half or so dedicated to relativity.

But even I need more than math. I also need to eat. And that’s the purpose of this post. Recently my dad and I brought home a six pound leg of lamb and fresh rosemary and garlic. Tonight’s the night we eat it. And now I sit, just having dressed the meat with a garlic and butter marinade and washed the dishes, waiting to prepare the potatoes — it’s important to time these things — before they all go in a roasting pan. And the while Creedance Clearwater Revival, sometimes spiked with Three Dog Night, blast in the background. Somehow the music seem appropriate enough as I washed the lamb’s blood from my sink.

If you’re in the area, feel free to stop by. The four of us couldn’t hope to finish this in one sitting.

Lately I’ve taken to keeping my wallet in my back pocket. I do this, mostly, because it is what I believe grown-ups, and, in particular, grown-up men do. It is unclear why I am under this impression. My friend Andrew started carrying a briefcase, chain-smoking, and drinking coffee and coke at breakfast, or whenever he had a drink, really, for much the same reasons, I believe.

To celebrate officially the passing from childhood to adulthood, I went to the mall tonight to purchase some “jobwear.” Now I don’t yet have a job, but should I manage to get one in the near future, I’ll have some new, pleated pants to wear in the office. Pleats have consistantly baffled me until now. Indeed, they still do and I’m working on that. These are the second pair of pleated pants I’ve bought in about four weeks. The first pair were for the Leverett semi-formal. Those, however, are flannel, and so I don’t count them on account of their whimsical material. No one can take you seriously in flannel. But, much like the wallet, somewhere in my mind I’ve decided that grown-ups wear pleated pants. It took me some time to get up the courage to try them on. Even having brought them back home, I’m still not convinced of their worth. But they do make me feel all grown up.

Twenty-three is such a funny age.

I just found some hockey skates, and they fit! They are my father’s, I believe. Perhaps he’ll let me borrow them. Time to go to Bright Hockey Center before I have to start paying.

Because of my mid-year graduation date, and because it’s fast approaching, I’ve starting sorting through the things I’ve kept in storage at my dad’s apartment in order to make room for the things presently in Cambridge. Initially, I thought this would be tedious and somewhat personally embarrassing [in much the same way rereading a paper I've written for a class is once I've received the graded version is embarrassing]. But this has been an absolute joy.

After an early Christmas dinner my sister and Jon sped off for dinner with his family. My father and Laurie shuttled off for one of their close friend’s holiday feast, leaving me with the Prius, some shrimp, and several plastic bins of my stuff, including a compact disc compilation of the Zombies greatest hits. As soon as the door shut, the carols were traded in for the Time of the Season.

The great thing about rifling through my former self’s things on Christmas is this: it’s like receiving lots of new[-ish] gifts that you really, really like, because, after all, you wouldn’t have gone through all that trouble to save it if you didn’t. I’ve found a whole bunch of clothes from senior year of high school and freshman year of college, even a suit, that still fit. Looks like I’ll be nattily fitted when DJ and I head back to Dorchester for Christmas beers with the Irish.

Liz, DJ, and I drove in to the Banshee on Dot Ave last night to celebrate my birthday. Sarah and Leah from Leverett joined the celebration and brought along their friend from Latin School, Kasha. We stole away to the upstairs, which we had to ourselves, except, perhaps, for the occasional patron in search of the bathroom.

Once the Banshee closed down for the night, Liz and DJ and I trekked nineteen miles down the street in search of a pizza place. We retrieved among the worst pizzas I’ve ever had. Despite its low-grade cheese and excessive oil, I managed to finish three slices. While waiting for the pizza, however, Donald ran into Mike, who, as luck would have it, bartends at the Banshee, and will be there, as a matter of fact, tonight. He has even offered free drinks.

Free stuff, free drinks, and the Zombies. Not a bad Christmas at all.

According to the academic calendar, school closed for winter recesss last night. That means that winter inspections are underway at Leverett House. This year I’ve been given the desk job while Mark and Brecker help out the big guy. I have my tasks, too. But my enterprising nature has left me without anything more to do in an official capacity. Though my PDE book has been ordered and received at Cabot Science Library, they still refuse my attempts to borrow it. Instead, I’ve compiled a list of some reading I’d like to plow through. Because I’m applying to various teaching positions, I thought it smart to bone up on my developmental psychology and learning theory. The ideas of Piaget and Vygotsky always sound appealing to me, but I’ve never read their original works. And as I don’t know who to trust but them, I’ve started in on The Psychology of Intelligence. Piaget believes in a number of developmental stages. From what I remember of Spelke’s class, this has been confirmed in the biology labs, so perhaps this isn’t such a waste of time. Piaget heavily influence Papert, and Papert was a mathematician. I’m a mathematician, transitivity or syllogism or something must apply. Of course, all this reading has got me thinking about thinking and thinking and remembering that diSessa at Berkeley’s school of education works on general relativity and cognition. How tempting does an doctorate in education with a focus on geometry and congitive structures sound? I need to do some more reading so I can talk to more people so I can decide on a proper course of action.

Tonight, some of my friends played a trick on me. While I was at the House Committee meeting, Pete sent this to the House mailing list:

Subject: [lev-open] A merry birthday celebration of JOSH REYES
Body:

Dear friends of Josh Reyes,

Josh’s birthday will be this Friday, December 23. Since many of us will be
home for the holidays however, let’s celebrate tonight.

Come to the Leverett Dining Hall at 10:30 to wish Josh a very merry
birthday. It’s a SURPRISE!

Don’t worry, he won’t be able to check his email before making his appearance.

WHAT: Josh Reyes’ Surprise B-day Celebration
WHERE: Leverett Dining Hall
WHEN: Sunday, Dec. 18 - 10:30 PM sharp

Don’t miss the last chance to party with Josh on a Sunday night before he graduates.

There will be cake and Leverett love. Don’t be late!

Apparently they [a group led by Steph] emailed all my facebook friends and tutors and more. Liz even came down from the Quad to eat cake. And better than cake, they presented me a bottle of single malt scotch, aged fifteen years. It’s not smokey; it doesn’t taste too much of peet, and it’s been lightly touched by heather and honey. I can’t say that I haven’t had a third of it while writing my still-to-be-finished ethnography of the Dunster House Messiah Sing, but I can say that I’ve been sharing. ‘Tis the season, and all that. And I really appreciate the gesture, even if I hate surprises. [My reaction time to surprise public events is slow; we're talking astronomical units of time.] It may’ve pulled me out my most recent three day funk.

Since the beginning of the semester I’ve been trying to learn to juggle. Anna, who lived in my room before I moved in, left some learn-to-juggle balls behind. I figured that a few minutes worth of practice each day would inevitably leave me a master juggler. Though I still believe it be the case, I’ve been remiss in my practicing.

Juggling causes, at least in me, another instance of gold star laziness. I say gold star because of a girl Rachel who first communicated to me a deep problem of mine. You see, Rachel, now a third or fourth year graduate student in computer science on her way to a PhD in systems engineering, almost failed the third grade. She never did her homework. It’s not that she couldn’t do her homework. Indeed, it was precisely the opposite. Rachel was so confident that she could do her homework and do it correctly, that she decided not to. While a perfect homework resulted in the highest distinction a grade schooler might receive—the coveted gold star sticker—she was just as happy to know that she could have one whenever she wanted. The homework, then, was redundant.

Now I’m not proposing that someone will give me a gold star if I practice my juggling. And I haven’t rushed out to buy a sheet of star-studded stickers. But I did read a book on learning theory by Seymour Papert. In it, he details what he calls “algorithmic thinking.” As an example, he explains how one might teach a computer to juggle. I use this sort of thinking all the time, especially when swimming. And somehow knowing the mechanics of juggling is satisfying enough for me not to learn how to juggle. Another case of all theory and no application.

It would be instructive, I think, to actually juggle, rather than merely to muse about it, though. But my ethnomusicology paper requires my attention, and for hours earlier today my computer would not comply. Having wrestled with DEM [a memory management safety valve built into Windows XP that I don't fully understand, but effectively crashes Explorer every time I try to turn my computer on] and won, I should turn to that. This paper: the Dunster House Thirty-Third Annual Messiash Sing-a-Long; in eight to ten pages, I aim to say what I could say in only three. College!

The Leverett winter formal was Sunday night; consequently I slept through all my engagements on Monday and can’t sleep in time for Tuesday. [The formal, by the way, answers the question "Why should we have a House system?" Enough people attended to encourage drinking and dancing but it was small enough that ever recognized everyone else. Also, it made me feel like a rock star when repeatedly asked how my date Stephen --- whom I purchased at the House auction a few weeks ago for fifty-three dollars American --- and I were doing. The scotch helped me feel like a rock star, too.]

So to pass the time, I’ve started investigating fares to San Francisco. But as I have few funds at my disposal, I’m limited to American Airlines. You see, I was in no hurry to go to Missouri earlier this April, and gladly slept in the Chicago airport a few hours for a two hundred fifty dollar travel voucher rather than take my seat on an over-sold flight to Springfield, MO. They even bought me lunch. And I enjoyed the travel-worn old-man at the bar aesthetic perhaps too much. I read Mallory at a microbrew. The beer was bad; the poetry was comparatively good, possibly because I’ve always wanted to be Sir Gareth. But knights aside, I’m planning to visit Daniel and Monica. Danny, you will remember, is our brave soldier down at Fort Bennings; Monica, or Moica to family, is Danny’s older sister. [She takes care of me from time to time, too.] And Moica lives and works in San Francisco. Then there are my family members who populate the surrounding areas to the north of the city. [It is the north, isn't it? Grandma, I leave it to you to keep me honest.] I’d like to stop by and check in with them if I can.

In times like these past, I would make a composite image of satellite photography to accentuate and discern funny land features. But Google Earth makes things like that so easy, that it’s spoiled the charm. I like to get in the nitty-gritty and play with each of the bands myself. I haven’t made a good map in sometime now, though there has been some talk about a tattoo of Indonesia lately. But I’m not of the sort who takes tattoos.

Despite the title of this entry, I am not going to talk about supergravity outside of this: Cabot recently purchased a book I may’ve used for my thesis. However they processed my order over a week late. I’ve got it with me now, just for kicks — personal edification and so that I can impress you, the reader, and the people who see me with it at lunch, like Luke and Lixin. On my way back from the Science Center, I flipped through the table of contents, I came across a chapter called “Geometrical Gravitational Theories,” which is why I asked the library buy the book in the first place. This book,Geometry, Spinors, and Applications, makes heavy use of — wait for it — spinors. There are lots of books on geometry; tons on applications; a sizable number on both geometry and applications. But there are surprisingly few on geometry, application, and special mention of spinors. And under that chapter on gravity, there’s a subheading: Simple supergravity. It reminded me of a conversation I had with Eda a few weeks ago. She finds that mathematicians are superficially humble, but in an oblivious and therefore endearing way. The idea of supergravity ever being simple is sort like a slap in my face, but in an endearing kind of way.

I quit you now to take up a programming assignment Paul has given me. He has resurrected that automated inspection-announcement-general purpose-web-based-email-program-thing project for me. He doesn’t like me to admit to him that I can’t do things, like, we’ll say for example, program. I’ve got a copy of PHP3: Programming Browser-Based Applications to my right. Somehow I think the supergravity would be simpler.