chaotic soliloquy

Rwanda Blog

2011-12-28T14:36:00.001-05:00

I have a new blog in which I chronicle my adventures as a Fulbright Scholar at the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology in Kigali, Rwanda. The blog is ruminations and dispatches. For the next 6-7 months I will be posting there and not here.

Still Alive

2011-10-23T23:59:00.003-04:00

Just a quick post to keep this blog alive. I think I will soon start a new blog, to coincide with a new adventure.

Life stumbles along. It is the middle of fall term, it's midnight on a Sunday, I'm listening to Armin van Buuren and grading homework. The cats are prowling around. When I look up at them they appear fuzzy. Not only because they are furry creatures, but also because I am wearing reading glasses. Yup. Reading glasses.

Prompt 5: Let Go

2010-12-09T01:25:00.003-05:00

Let Go. What (or whom) did you let go of this year? Why?

The first thing that comes to mind is a vision of myself as a very good athlete. I have played ultimate frisbee for many years, and at one point at a fairly high level of competition.* I've not played competitively in a very long time, but the last five years or so have played semi-regularly in semi-regular and semi-skilled pickup games in Bar Harbor. I've been slowing down for quite some time, but this year I think I moved another notch slower. I seem to have perpetual hamstring problems and I just can't sprint the way I used to.

So this year I've let go the memory of the player I once was. Well, not the memory, but the idea that I can still be that person, or that it even makes sense to imagine that I can be that person. I've not been playing a high level since forever, as I've been quite aware. But I no longer feel bad about it. If someone half my age outruns me, that's ok.

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* In the early 90s I was captain of my college team which made nationals twice, placing sixth in the nation my senior year. Later I was on a club team that somehow managed to place fifth at the world championships. I was not a star by any means, but I was good enough to play a supporting role on some very very good teams.

Prompt 4: Wonder

2010-12-08T01:29:00.002-05:00

Wonder: How did you cultivate a sense of wonder in your life this year?

Looks like I'm not alone in feeling grumpy about some of the prompts. Anyway...

I don't think I did anything to cultivate a sense of wonder, and that's ok. I don't know that I need wonder, and to the extent that I do, I don't know that it needs cultivating. And wonder isn't necessarily a good thing. I most often find myself wondering about how things can be so messed up or stupid. But I don't have to do anything to seek this out. The stupid finds me just fine. All I need to do is go to faculty meeting. Or open my email. Or for a different sense of wonder I could read the news and think about the most recent elections. No thanks. Plenty of wonder in my life already. No need to cultivate any more.

To end on a slightly less negative note, good, uplifting trance music continues to help me not succumb to despair and/or just start punching people. Here is a track I'm liking a lot this week. I don't think it cultivates wonder, but it does make life suck a little less.

Prompt 3: Moment

2010-12-05T03:09:00.002-05:00

Moment. Pick one moment during which you felt most alive this year. Describe it in vivid detail (texture, smells, voices, noises, colors).

I'm not fond of having to choose just one. I felt very alive much of the year. Anyway, the first moment that comes to mind is kayaking on the north shore of the St. Lawrence as we do almost every year. The last day of our trip was amazing. It was perfectly still and gray and foggy. It was just an amazing day. We didn't see many whales that day, but it was still incredible. The water was so still that I could hear birds diving and surfacing on the water and seals breathing.

There were some other amazing moments from that trip. Twice we saw a trio of Northern Gannets fly by. They're intense-looking birds. Their name in French is better than English: Fou de Bassan. It was also great hanging out at our campsite, hearing whales, watching the stars come out, and seeing glowing satellites circling the earth.

A few other moments come to mind, all of them quite different from each other. For me there's nothing quite like the feeling of a class that went really well. So there are lots of little moments from teaching that stand out, especially for my Calculus, Linear Algebra, and Sustainable Energy classes. Those three courses in particular I think were quite successful.

This summer I had time to do some research that involved some programming and data analysis. It wasn't anything that involved, but being able to focus on coding for a few days was really nice. I find coding to be remarkably energizing and focusing. I wish I could do more of it. Conveniently, I'm teaching a programming class next term, so I'll probably get my wish.

I also recall a few amazing meals from 2010. We had some great food at our favorite restaurants in Portland and Quebec City. We also cooked some great food at home.

Propmpt 2: Writing

2010-12-04T03:05:00.003-05:00

Well, I'm already behind on this reverb10 thing. So maybe I won't worry about doing one a day, but will go through the daily prompts at my own pace.

Prompt 2: Writing. What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it?

First of all, I find this prompt a little annoying. It's like I'm being asked to confess or someone is trying to make me feel guilty. The prompt was written by Leo Batuba, who maybe should mind his own business.

Anyway, now that I've gotten that out of my system, what stops me from writing? Well, I don't think it's any one thing. If it was, I would have eliminated that thing already, since I'm not an idiot. Usually it's the accumulation of lots of little things that just nibble away at me. I try and carve out dedicated time for writing, but life sometimes just doesn't allow it. That's not an excuse, it's just a fact.

Writing for me is sometimes surprisingly easy, and sometimes surprisingly hard. I don't really know how to predict which it will be, which is why it's surprising. Looking ahead to 2011, in some ways I hope to be writing less. My textbook should be done soon (although I've been saying that for a long time) and I'm looking forward to doing more research and coding and reading, and not writing quite so much. On the other hand, I know I'll still end up doing a ton of writing of all sorts, as in my job writing is just impossible to escape.

I think I'll end this reverb response now, because I'm tempted to say some more cranky things about Leo. The next few prompts look more more interesting. Perhaps I'll respond to prompt three tomorrow.

reverb 10

2010-12-01T22:33:00.002-05:00

So I thought I would give this #reverb10 thing a try. I'll only be able to do it up until the 15th, since I'll traveling from the 15th to the 30th and won't have internet access. And I may get bored with it before then. But for now, here goes.

Prompt for December 1: One Word
Encapsulate the year 2010 in one word. Explain why you’re choosing that word. Now, imagine it’s one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2011 for you?

For 2010, I guess the word would be frustrated, or maybe unfinished or incomplete. It wasn't a bad year at all, but there were a few frustrating things, and also there some major projects, mostly research-related, that I had wanted to finish but which I probably won't.

For 2011, maybe the word will be completed or finished.

Turning Toward Winter

2010-10-31T21:12:00.003-04:00

It seems as if winter is here. I went for a run today at Witch Hole, and there was no one else on the trail. My only company were a few ducks and lots and lots of wet leaves and pine needles. Toward the end of my run it started snowing a little. It was awesome.

The town has more or less emptied out, and it's getting darker and darker. My rhythm is shifting toward winter. The last few days I've had a nice fire in the woodstove, and today I made soup using the last of the kale and chard from the garden.

There are just three weeks left in the term. The end is in sight. I'm actually mostly on top of grading, which is nice. There is still a lot of work to do, though. The toughest will be writing lots of evaluations once the term ends.

I continue to make progress on my Chaos and Fractals book. It's been tough to get a lot done during the term, but I've actually kept up some writing momentum. I really want to have the whole thing done by mid-December. I'm not sure if this is a realistic goal, but I'm going to push hard and get as close as I can.

Holistic Cat Food

2010-10-11T00:24:00.002-04:00

The local Hannaford is out of the dry cat food that I usually get. So the other day I was looking around for alternatives. "Nature's Place," Hannaford's natural or green brand, has a type of cat food called "holistic cat food." What could this possibly mean? Does the bag come with cat brain teasers and exercise devises to stimulate the mind and body as well as provide calories? If my cats eat the food will they develop a greater sense of the connection among all things and develop a capacity to see things as connected and contextualized as opposed to isolated entities?

I won't find out. I opted for Iams indoor weight control food instead of Nature's place holistic cat food.

Scenes from Bar Harbor

2010-09-28T00:27:00.002-04:00

At the grocery store, during the short break between customers the young woman bagging fills spare grocery fliers with hearts, drawn with a bright yellow highlighter.

At the natural foods store, a fit-looking middle-aged man in a Che Guevara t-shirt buys a large five-gallon tub of bulk tofu and hauls it into his car.

Mid-Summer Core Dump

2010-07-31T23:06:00.003-04:00

A few people have noted that's it's been approximately forever since I've posted here, so I thought it was time for an update. Tomorrow it will be August. So I'm telling myself that I'm at the half-way point of summer. This isn't really true, of course. But I'm telling myself this anyway and trying hard to believe it. It's almost working. Anyway, a bunch of summertime thoughts follow.

This is the first summer I haven't been to China in a long time. I had gone for six years in a row: 2004-2009. I miss it. I really like Beijing. It's a fun, lively, huge city with lots to do. And the food is awesome. I hope to return again soon.

While I'm disappointed to not be in China, I'm nevertheless perfectly happy to be in Maine. This is the longest summertime stretch I've spent in Maine perhaps ever. Doreen and I went to Quebec City for a weekend and to the Boston area for a few days in June. And we have our usual trip to the Saguenay region planned in late August. But other that that, I've been here. For the most part, it's been great to be in Maine. Summers are nice here, and while I love traveling, it's also nice to stay put for a bit.

One of the best parts of the summer has been having time to do research and writing. I've spent some time with both R and python, have solidified my understanding of some statistics, and have done some interesting reading and writing. In general, it's been really fun to be able to do some programming and some real research. I find something incredibly satisfying and relaxing about programming.

I've also been doing a lot of writing. The main thing I've been working on is my textbook on chaos and fractals. I've been working on this for a while and it is nearing completion. I don't really have a feel for how much work I have to do yet, but I know that it's a lot, but also that the end is in sight. The book is under contract to Oxford University Press, and they're kind of expecting it at the end of the summer. I'm not sure I'll make it, but I haven't given up hope.

In the course of working on the book I've come to the conclusion that it is fairly easy to write a decent textbook, but that it's quite hard to write a really good one. The book by now is at a point where it works well for me. But of course I'm writing the book so that people who aren't me can teach and learn from it. So this requires a good bit of additional writing. When I teach from it I provide background motivation and transitions from one chapter to the other. But these need to be in the book itself. This has been taking quite a bit of time.

I've also spent some time the last few weeks working on a research paper. The basic results are actually seven years old, but my collaborators and I haven't published them, and there are some new ways that I have to present our results that I think will make it a good paper. It's been fun to re-acquaint myself with the research and to make some interesting plots. I hope to have this submitted in a few days.

Research aside, it's been nice to be in Maine. Although the weather was uncomfortably humid and hot for most of July, it's still be pretty pleasant. And the last few days have been amazing. Warm, dry, sunny, and pleasant. My garden is in good shape this year. The unusually warm weather has been good for tomatoes. We've already harvested a few, and lots more are on their way. I think we'll get a few eggplants. I'm not sure what's going on with our tomatillos. We had a good lettuce crop, the kale and chard is hanging on, the onions look good. and we've had lots of parsley and cilantro and basil. Winter squash vines are doing well, and I think we'll have a few cucumbers next week.

I've also enjoyed having a chance to exercise semi-regularly. We've had decent ultimate frisbee games downtown twice a week, and I've been doing yardwork on the weekends and also running and biking some. I don't necessarily feel in better shape than usual (or less worse shape than usual), but nevertheless it's nice to be moving.

Overall, being able to exercise, garden, and spend some time on research and writing has been great. I still feel frustrated that I can't do more. I wish I found it easier to get completely lost in research, but it's hard with so many things going on. There's still a lot of summertime left, though.

Gross

2010-06-09T15:28:00.003-04:00

For a long time I've been a fan of Balance Bars. They're pretty tasty and a good snack when I'm hungry and need a little something to eat and don't want a full meal or anything. Yesterday I had a balance bar and for some reason my eye was drawn to the word "fish" on the list of ingredients. I wasn't even trying to read it, but the word just jumped out.

Then I read it more carefully and it turns out that Balance Bars contain fish gelatin. I find this super gross. I haven't eaten meat or fish for 20 years or so. I'm certain that I've had fish products in stuff, especially when traveling in China. One of the types of Thai curry TastyBite entrees has fish in it as well, which I only discovered after having it once or twice. So it's not like the Balance Bars are the only fishy stuff I've ever had.

Nevertheless, I think this is just gross. Fish are yucky. Well, actually, I think fish are pretty cool. They're great as fish -- things that swim around in the water and that we should just leave alone and not eat. It's the eating of fish that I think is yucky. Yes, I know there are some cultures that eat lots of fish. That's fine, I guess. But I don't want to eat fish. I don't know why Balance would put fish in their chocolatey nutrition bars. Ug. I wrote Balance an email, but they didn't answer.

I guess I need to read labels really carefully. But I'd have thought that Balance Bars were free from animal and fish products. Oh well.

Anyway, I've got a bunch of Balance Bars now that I have no intention of eating. If there's anyone reading this in Bar Harbor who want them, let me know.

Sunday

2010-06-06T16:36:00.002-04:00

It's been a nice Sunday so far. Slept in and spent the morning reading and doing dishes and other housework while listening first to Johan Geilen and then Spearhead. I was able to get a decent run in during a break in the rain. I got wet, but at least it wasn't pouring. Now I'm in my office trying to get organized. Listening to Above & Beyond and trying to just do stuff and not think too much about all I have to do. Am having mixed success.

A thunderstorm rolled through which was nice. A big thunderclap rattled the windowpane. It's still drizzling but is supposed to stop soon. Shortly I will head home for a good meal and an evening of grading while watching hockey and basketball finals.

Almost Over

2010-06-04T23:30:00.002-04:00

Chilling out at home. Listening to an old Hed Kandi radio show while Doreen listens to French news streaming online. Today was the last day of classes of spring term. Late afternoon we had our awards ceremony, which was its usual mix of awkward and nice. This was followed by a reception for seniors and their families, which was fun. Then Doreen and I went to dinner with a bunch of the graduation speakers. It was a nice meal, but the acoustics at the restaurant weren't good, so it was loud and hard to have a discussion. Tomorrow is graduation.

I'm glad the term is over. It was a very tiring ten weeks. I need a few days to recover and then I have mountains of work to do. I have much grading and then almost fifty evaluations to write. There are two papers I need to referee, and I'm the external reader on a dissertation. All of these I should do by the end of June, if not sooner. And there is a book review that I'm supposed to have done in July. I also have a bunch of grant-related odds and ends that need to get dealt with. And then there is my main task for the summer, which is to finish my Chaos and Fractals textbook. I'm looking forward to it all, except for the grant stuff.

Tomorrow, though, will be a morning of rest, and an afternoon and evening of celebration with graduates and their families.

Secret Memo

2010-05-12T15:45:00.003-04:00

If you are using the photocopier and it stops and tells you to load paper into a tray, do as the machine suggests. Don't just walk away. Because when you do this, your copying job doesn't get deleted. It stays in the machine's brain. This is true even if you log out of your account. Then when someone like me comes along who is willing to put paper in the copier, your job automatically gets completed. If, say, you were photocopying documents that you wanted to be confidential, well, they're not confidential any more, since they are streaming out of the machine and it is hard for me not to notice them.

Halfway to Summer?

2010-05-02T01:10:00.002-04:00

We're at the midpoint of spring term. So in some sense we're halfway to summer. I'm looking forward to it. I will be traveling less than usual, and so will get to settle in and hopefully enjoy summer in Maine. I'll have some major work to do, but it still should be nice.

Spring term is slugging along. I'm enjoying my classes, but things are really busy. Much busier and a little weirder or something than they should be. I'm not sinking, but I'm working really hard and just barely staying above water. There is a growing number of things that I'm behind on and it's starting to get troubling. I owe some grant reports and am behind on some correspondence. I just haven't quite had the time or energy to deal with it all and get caught up. Nor have I had the time to sleep as much as would be healthy.

And things are just odd. COA is in the midst of a strategic planning process which is at times surreal. Lots of people are on edge about it. The draft documents we've received have been less than inspiring. It's hard to know how to engage in the process, whether or not I should engage, and whether or not my (or anyone's) input is welcome.

The last two months have been the warmest on record in Maine. And the oil spill in the Gulf sounds horrific. It's hard to imagine how much damage and destruction will follow.

But the warm weather has brought spring to Maine very early. Flowers are about two-three weeks early. Lilacs will start blooming next week. Today was achingly beautiful. Warm and sunny and summery. Made it hard to get a lot of work done. I bought a bunch of plants for the garden and did some yardwork and laundry and went for a short and very slow run. I continue to slip farther behind, but it was a wonderful Saturday.

The stupid, it burns

2010-03-27T21:58:00.002-04:00

So I was driving in to town today and I was listening to a Red Sox pre-season game. Kinda odd since it doesn't feel remotely spring-like, as it I think the high temperature today was 32. On the other hand, it does feel like spring in that spring term starts the day after tomorrow. And I'm already so far behind it's pathetic. And frustrating.

Anyway, I heard an ad on the radio for "burn flavored doritos." They are apparently super spicy. Too hot? Not to worry, just wash them down with "pepsi max cease fire." This is diet pepsi that is specially formulated to go well with the burn doritos. Specifically, pepsi cease fire "cools the burn" associated with burn doritos.

My head hurts. First of all, "burn" is not a flavor. It's just not. Something could taste burnt. But burn flavor doesn't make sense. And to the extent it does make sense, it's gross. Second, what's up with the diet pepsi? I suspect that a carbonated beverage would increase the pain, not reduce it. Sour cream or yogurt would be much more soothing.

There is a lot that is horribly wrong in this world.

Halfway

2010-02-08T00:02:00.003-05:00

We're exactly at the half-way point of our ten-week term. My class is moving along nicely, I think. I did a bunch of grading tonight so now I'm no longer criminally behind.

The cold weather is starting to get tiresome. It's been a bad year for skating, so I haven't been spending that much time outside, except for hauling wood in from the wood pile. The days are getting noticeably longer, however, which is nice.

There are all sorts of things I'm behind on. Large and small tasks are piling up. I'm starting to get a little stressed out about it all, which I think actually is good. I work better when slightly stressed out. So ... I'm hoping for a moderately stressful, and very productive week.

Cats

2010-02-01T21:17:00.000-05:00

From Cats Winter 09-10

Three cats in front of the woodstove on a cold February evening. Left-to-right: Ancho, Monster, Apple.

Staring at the Sea

2010-01-16T23:53:00.002-05:00

I've got this song stuck in my head. I like it a lot. Staring at the Sea by DJ Eco. Delicious, rich, energetic trance.

It was warm today. Almost 40 degrees. It felt like spring. I went for a short run outside for the first time since November. The run was pathetically slow, but it was nevertheless nice to get moving.

I cooked a reasonably tasty batch of spicy tofu and seitan. And Doreen just made some very good green tea ice cream. Yum. All in all, not a bad Saturday.

The invisible high school or the invisible college?.

2010-01-11T21:49:00.003-05:00

Some thought-provoking ideas about what the internet means from the always interesting Clay Shirky:

Given what we have today, the Internet could easily become Invisible High School, with a modicum of educational material in an ocean of narcissism and social obsessions. We could, however, also use it as an Invisible College, the communicative backbone of real intellectual and civic change, but to do this will require more than technology. It will require that we adopt norms of open sharing and participation, fit to a world where publishing has become the new literacy.

Read the full essay here.

Research Experiences for Undergraduates

2010-01-04T16:39:00.002-05:00

I just posted some advice for undergraduates interested in research experiences. I feel like I've had the same discussion about research internships many, many times, and so it might be a good use of time to write some stuff down. Hopefully it will be of use for students.

If you see anything I've missed or have anything to add, please let me know, either via email or by commenting here.

Thanks.

Ready for Winter Term

2010-01-03T23:28:00.002-05:00

Winter term starts tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it. I think it will be a mostly manageable term. I'm just teaching one class, and it's one that I've taught eight times before. I'll have plenty to fill up my time, and no shortage of things to work on. But it should be less hectic than fall term, when I was teaching two classes, one of which was very large by COA standards. And, I wrote five grants between August and mid-December. (Technically I only wrote four, since one was a re-submission of the August grant. But the resubmission was a complete re-write, so I think it counts as a new grant. And neither grant came close to getting funded, which is incredibly annoying.) But the grant that I liked the most did get funded, which is quite exciting. It's for almost $50,000 a year for two years. My portion of the grant will be to help develop and teach a class on sustainable energy.

Winter break has been nice, although except for the last three days it hasn't really been that much of a break. In some ways I was working as hard during the break as during the term. But it was a good change of pace. But it will also be a nice change to be back in the rhythm of teaching.

I feel I should offer up some year-end pithiness, but I don't have much to say. The academic year is more meaningful to me than the calendar year. I don't really make new years resolutions. If I did it would be to be more productive, exercise more, do a better job of staying in touch with friends, and so on. But I basically resolve these things every day. Results are mixed. I also might resolve to start brewing beer and make my own kim chee.

Chilling Out

2009-12-31T00:06:00.003-05:00

For the first time in our long winter break, I feel like I'm actually on break. Between grading, writing evaluations, pushing very hard on a writing project, and also writing a grant, I've been keeping busy. Doreen and I went away for a few days before Christmas, but I had work with me and although it was a nice change of pace, it didn't quite feel like a break. I now have a few days to chill out before winter term starts. I've still got stuff to do, of course, but I feel like I can let up for a little bit.

Currently I'm enjoying an insanely good beer while watching the cats try and get into trouble. The woodstove is hot, and while the house isn't exactly warm, it is rather cozy.

Elegy

2009-12-18T19:43:00.004-05:00

Sounds like the Copenhagen summit has ended very badly. This video from the American Natural History Museum seems like a fitting elegy.

If you have a fast enough computer, watch it in full-screen mode by clicking in lower right.

Op-ed and Depressing Comments

2009-12-16T16:02:00.002-05:00

Doreen and a COA student have an op-ed piece in the Bangor Daily News today about the Copenhagen climate negotiations. The comments on the piece make for interesting—and depressing—reading. The venom and animus is alarming. It's not surprising, it seems to happen on every article about climate change these days. E.g., here and here. It's rather disheartening.

port-royal

2009-12-14T14:54:00.002-05:00

Two nice port-royal videos for grantwriting on a wintry day.

Sudden Transition

2009-12-08T00:33:00.004-05:00

In just a few days it seems to have gone from early fall to mid winter. Four or five days ago it was almost 60 degrees. Saturday night we got around 8 inches of snow. Today it was all winter. Grey, cold, and snow on the ground. We got a little more snow tonight. And it gets dark really early. Winter is definitely here. We've transition to the time of the year when we need to consistently maintain a fire in the woodstove, and the parts of the house away from the stove are always a little chilly.

I'm almost done with writing evaluations from fall term. Then I can focus solely on writing projects for the next few weeks. I'll be glad to have the time to work on other things.

Random Tidbits

2009-11-23T23:52:00.003-05:00

There is a house in Bar Harbor that already has Christmas lights up. Is this really necessary?
A few days ago when driving home past the dumb Christmas lights house I heard a part of a story on NPR about a new CD of Norwegian lute music. The commentator gushingly said that the music was classical, but also sort of jazzy. I changed the station.
I've made unusually good progress on grading. I'm basically done with my physics grading, which is good. I have three Calc III problem sets left to grade, but I think this won't take too long, since the class is kinda small.
The list of things I need to get done the next few weeks is frighteningly large.
Today was remarkably frustrating in some ways. I spent a good chunk of time dealing with really stupid stuff. Hopefully tomorrow will be better. I'm not optimistic.

Fall Term Ends

2009-11-20T21:45:00.003-05:00

Today was the end of our fall term. I'm glad it's over, although it's always a little sad to say good bye to a class.. I'm tired and weary. For a number of reasons this term was much more draining than most. A break will be good. In many ways I have more work to do over break than I did during the term. So perhaps it's more of a change of pace than a break. But nevertheless, I'm looking forward to it.

Had a nice, relaxing meal with Doreen at the Side Street Cafe this evening. It was a nice way to end the term. The food was quite good. Now at home and too exhausted to do much of anything. I'm looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow.

Late Afternoon

2009-11-16T00:10:00.003-05:00

I went for a run late this afternoon at Little Long Pond. I almost didn't go. It had been a rainy weekend and I hadn't had super productive day. So I thought about staying home and continuing to work on grading. But I decided to go. Definitely the right decision. Little long pond was just incredibly beautiful. It's always a nice spot, but today was different. The late afternoon winter light was great and there was amazing mist hanging still over the pond. The day was warm almost like summertime, but the light was low and wintry. It was incredible.

I had received sad news earlier in the day. Someone I got to know in China a few years ago is terminally ill. He's far too young -- it's hard to make sense of it. It's a really stupid cliche, but thinking of him while running made the day even more precious. It was just starting to get dark as I finished up. A few hundred meters before the end of the run I could suddenly smell the salty ocean. It hit me all at once; the smell was fantastic.

I'm now at home, moving slowly through yet another pile of grading. Listening to Miles and Trane and trying to get ready for the week.

Dulce et Decorum Est

2009-11-11T22:29:00.002-05:00

For veteran's day, the final stanza of Wilfred Owen's poem Dulce et Decorum Est:

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

The translation of the Latin is: It is sweet and right to die for one's country.

Letters of Recommendation

2009-11-09T14:54:00.002-05:00

The season of writing letters of recommendation has begun. I did my first one last week, and already have a bunch more in the queue. There will be a flurry in December and early January, when most graduate school applications are due, and then another flurry in January and February, when undergrad research internship applications are due.

I wrote some stuff about letters of recommendation for students. If there anything I should add, from either the point of view of the recommender or the person being recommended? If so, please leave a comment or drop me an email.

I'm trying to put together some pages with advice and links for students. The letter of recommendation page is just the first step. I'm going to try and write some about undergraduate science internships and research experiences later this week.

Disappointed in Maine

2009-11-04T16:35:00.003-05:00

In a close vote, Maine voted to repeal a law granting same-sex couples the right to marriage. It is disappointing and disheartening. The path to justice is not easy. Progress is not inevitable.

I must confess, my friends, the road ahead will not always be smooth. There will be still rocky places of frustration and meandering points of bewilderment. There will be inevitable setbacks here and there. There will be those moments when the buoyancy of hope will be transformed into the fatigue of despair. Our dreams will sometimes be shattered and our ethereal hopes blasted. We may again with tear-drenched eyes have to stand before the bier of some courageous civil rights worker whose life will be snuffed out by the dastardly acts of bloodthirsty mobs. Difficult and painful as it is, we must walk on in the days ahead with an audacious faith in the future. ... When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.

Martin Luther King Jr., "Where Do We Go From Here?" (1967)

I see a tremendous creative force in students and friends here at COA. And although today seems dark, I have faith that their light will continue to shine. As my friend Suzanne often points out, disappointment is powerful. It means you've found something you care about. Disappointment has much to teach us, if we let it.

The Milky Future

2009-10-26T22:45:00.003-04:00

Buying half and half gives me a glimpse into the future. I always look at the expiration date when I make my selection. The carton I got today expires Dec 2. Difficult to believe.

We're in the time of year when autumn moves in fast. Every day it seems to get dark noticeably earlier than the day before. The leaves are falling off the trees, and the town is getting emptier and emptier. Nevertheless, dairy products that expire in December still are a shock.

Stuff

2009-10-23T22:19:00.003-04:00

Listening to Armin van Buuren's "A State of Trance" 427 at head-splitting volume. Fantastic. Just what I need.
I need to have a big weekend of grading. If I can get reasonably caught up, the next several weeks might be bearable in terms of work.
Had a very nice meal at Mache Bistro tonight. I hadn't been there since they got a new chef a few years ago. It was quite good. Certainly better than I remembered it being before.
This post is going nowhere. Perhaps I'm more brain-dead than I thought. I hope I get a good night's sleep tonight. I need it.

Grantwriting

2009-10-16T22:20:00.002-04:00

A student asked me recently why I haven't been blogging so much of late. I'm not really sure why. There's probably not a single reason. But one factor is that I've spent an enormous amount of time writing grants lately. In the last month or so I've submitted three grants. One is a proposal to the National Science Foundation to support the Beijing Complex Systems Summer School that I help to organize. (This is with the Santa Fe Institute, not College of the Atlantic.) The other two grants were each for around 100k to support various sustainability and sustainable energy things at COA.

The grant narratives totaled 36 pages of pretty dense, single-spaced text. I also had to write budgets, budget justifications, project summaries, timelines, and so on. So it was a lot of writing. Writing three grants in a row has been interesting. I don't mind writing grants. I think it's a good challenge, and it's nice to be able to get money to do good things. However, it can also be a little odd or disorienting, as it can require writing things in ways that I'd really rather not write things.

For example, two of the grants were ostensibly about education, but there were certain educational activities that they wouldn't fund. So I had to talk about education without too directly talking about teaching. And for one grant I had to use the words "sustainability" and "stakeholder" a lot. I don't like either of these words very much. But this was clearly what the granting agency wanted to hear, so I used these words often. I took some small solace in the fact that my spell checker refuses to believe that these are legitimate words.

Anyway, I'm glad to be done with grantwriting for a while. I have some other writing projects I need to work on, but they're not grants, and so I can write them as I want to, not as I think somebody else wants me to. Of course I still have to be mindful of audience, since I'm not writing things for nobody to read. But I feel like I have a lot more flexibility in how I write things.

So, in part I haven't been blogging because I've been doing a ton of writing, and thus writing blog stuff doesn't provide the change-of-pace that it does when I'm busy with non-writing tasks.

In other news, the term grinds along. As usual, I like my classes a lot. And as usual, I'm a little behind in grading and I wish I had more time. Fall has definitely arrived. The leaves have turned and are starting to fall. We've had a number of frosts this week and it's been grey and windy. It's quite beautiful, if somewhat cold.

Two Surprises

2009-09-30T22:32:00.004-04:00

Today I had dinner downtown and bought myself a cookie at the Morning Glory Bakery. I returned to campus for a few hours and decided to leave the cookie in my car to have later. When I got in my car to go home I had completely forgotten about the cookie, and so it was a very exciting surprise.

When I arrived home, the kittens (who aren't really kittens any more -- they're big and grown up) weren't at the door to meet me. The reason is that they were playing with a dead or almost dead mouse. It took me a while to get them to relinquish the it. At this point I'm pretty sure the mouse was quite dead. There was quite a bit of blood on the kitchen floor. Ug. I feel bad for the mouse. I wonder if he was friends with the pack of mice that seem to be living in my office on campus.

For Rashmi

2009-09-14T19:24:00.003-04:00

Below are remarks that I read earlier today at a memorial gathering for Rashmi Bhure, a 2009 graduate of COA who died last week. It was incredibly difficult and sad to write, and very hard to read aloud.

We gather today with heavy hearts to mourn the passing of Rashmi Bhure and also to remember and celebrate her life. I knew Rahsmi as her teacher and her academic advisor, and I am grateful to be able to share some memories and reflections in the company of others who knew her and cared for her.

Our thoughts today are with Rashmi's mother and her sister. Know that all of us at COA offer you our deepest sympathies. You are in our thoughts, our prayers, and our hearts.

I extend my condolences to students, both here in this room and spread out across the globe, who have been touched by Rashmi's life and feel the pain and loss of her death.

I also acknowledge four of my friends and colleagues who in recent months worked especially closely with Rashmi: Sarah Luke, Rae Barter, Lucy Creevey, and Todd Little-Siebold. I know these last few days have been challenging. Your care and guidance meant a great deal to Rashmi. It means a lot to me, too. You have my deep gratitude.

Rashmi was my advisee since her first days at COA. She began her studies here focusing on development and economics, feminism and gender studies. She took challenging classes and did well. Like many COA students, she arrived on campus with a vision for a better world, and was exploring paths to conceptualize and realize that world. Her professors praised her curiosity and sincerity, her thoughtful comments and interactions in class.

I got to know Rashmi directly as a student when she took my Calculus class in her second year. The material was not easy for her, but she challenged herself to understand. And she succeeded, and she left my class understanding Calculus. But Rashmi was on her way to learning that economics and calculus and policy were not her true passion. The type of change she was interested in could not be measured by a derivative. Her dreams and hopes were too big to be measured in dollars and utility functions.

A turning point for Rashmi was the Popular Psychology class she took with Rich Borden. I think she was surprised to find that the study of psychology resonated with her in a way that economics did not. She then planned a residency, the equivalent of three independent studies, for the subsequent fall. She chose to call this project "Approaches to Emotion in Ancient Indian and Western Psychology." Under the guidance of Rich Borden and Jen Munyer, Rashmi sought to understand and synthesize Eastern and Western approaches to emotion, the mind, and the self. Rashmi wrote that this residency was a transformative experience and helped her make sense of her COA education and her life. She found this work intellectually satisfying, stabilizing, and on more than one occasion expressed gratitude for the support she received from Rich and Jen and the opportunity to craft such a project.

Rashmi spent most of the next several terms in India, doing internships and a senior project with various self-help and microfinance organizations, and also with a youth media group. She completed her senior project, titled "The Microfinance movement: Studies in India," and this July was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree. I am so proud that she made it.

I will remember Rashmi as a kind and gentle young student. Rashmi was acutely aware that she straddled religious and cultural worlds. She patiently lived in this superposition—humble, curious, and delicate. Rashmi had remarkable grace, not only in her physical comportment but in the way she strove to make a path through a world that for her was too often difficult and frightening.

As teachers we are used to students coming in and out of our lives. It is part of the rhythm of our profession. But no teacher expects to say goodbye to a student in this way. I struggle to find words for my confusion and pain. I feel I have so much to say, and yet there is nothing that can be said. There is no category to which the emptiness belongs, no calculation that makes sense of it, no words that lessen the loss.

We cannot fully know the forces that breathe life and love into an otherwise still earth. But we do know that it is right to dedicate our time on earth to nourish those forces so that their light burns a little more brightly.

We cannot fully know the darkness that took Rashmi from us. But we can seek solace and warmth in friendship, fellowship, and community.

And we cannot possibly know Rashmi's pain during her last days or hours. But we know that beauty and love endures in even the darkest of times. We can hold each other a little closer, give thanks, and treasure each, deep breath.

Rashmi, we love you. We miss you. And we will remember you always.

Wednesday

2009-09-09T23:04:00.002-04:00

Tomorrow I teach a class for the first time since March 13. It's been a long time away from the classroom for me. Will be good to get back. Physics I tomorrow and then Calculus III on Friday. Both classes I think will be pretty fun. I've taught them each before quite a few times so I think I know what to expect.

I went into town late afternoon to run a few errands. Parking was surpisingly difficult to find. At the supermarket it seemed like every other person was talking on her or his cell phone. One woman by the yogurt case sounded as if she was talking to a doctor. "It hurts when I turn to the left" I heard her repeat a couple of times as I walked past her. After the supermarket, while walking to the pharmacy I saw a mail carrier with a fairly gory depicion of a crucified Jesus tattooed on his calf.

Tonight Doreen and I went to the top of Cadillac to watch an unusually bright encounter with two human-made satellites: the international space station and the space shuttle. I thought it was pretty cool. They zipped by one after the other and were quite bright—about as bright as venus. The non-human-made stars were impressive, too.

It all starts tomorrow

2009-09-06T23:15:00.003-04:00

Tomorrow it all begins. At 10am I give a welcome-to-college, welcome-to-COA motivational speech thing to entering students. A few days of orientation and then classes on Thursday. Weeks of mayhem will ensue. In the next month I'll be writing two or maybe three grants. I'll be teaching two classes and working on the chaos textbook that I'm writing. I think it will be a crazy but productive term. I like deadlines and I even like some kinds of stress. I should have plenty.

I hope they don't find me and shoot me

2009-09-05T10:24:00.003-04:00

I just got a call from the NRA. The woman explained that they were conducting a one-question opinion poll about the UN plans to ban guns in the U.S. She was about to play me a recorded statement by some NRA guy but I interrupted and asked the caller to explain what these UN plans were. She said that it was due to Mexico, which is a country that blames the US for their (Mexico's) drug problems. Apparently Mexico is chairing some commission or something.

I asked the caller what jurisdiction the UN had over the laws of a sovereign nation like the U.S. There was a pause. Then the caller said that the anti-gun secretary of state Hillary Clinton agreed to meet with Mexico. I commented that the secretary of state had nothing to do with lawmaking since she was part of the executive branch and that it was the legislative branch, Congress, that makes laws.

There was a long silence. The caller stammered a little. I added that this was simply a fact. Congress makes gun laws, not the secretary of state. At this point the caller thanked me for taking time to talk to her and ended the conversation.

The conversation was actually kind of fun. I was surprised at how easy it was to totally flummox the NRA caller. And I was a little disappointed that the called ended so quickly.

But at another level the call was pretty scary. The caller evoked a classic trio of conspiracies/paranoia: the UN is taking over; they-want-to-take-our-guns; Hillary Clinton. Yikes. At least there was no mention of black helicopters.

I wonder how I got on the NRA's list? I suspect they won't be calling back.

Not profound

2009-09-03T23:10:00.004-04:00

I'm not sure I have much profound to say. Not just on this blog, but in general. I seem to have a lot of small to medium writing projects to do, none of which are particularly scintillating. I have two final reports to write for grants and a preliminary draft of a grant that will need some revision. I submitted a referee report on a bland paper today, so at least that's done. And I also need to re-submit an NSF grant. The proposal was rejected, but I think it should be possible to address most of the referee's concerns in the revised proposal. Annoyingly, I think it was only one referee who had any substantive objections.

Anyway, all these things are pretty straightforward. I don't really need to be deep. I think I know what needs to be done and I just need to do it. Unfortunately, I'm not particularly fast at this type of writing, although I'm getting faster. Somehow the weight of all this proposal and report writing, plus a slug of email that I'm very behind on, and needing to gear up for the term that starts in a week, has kinda pressed all the profundity out of me and I feel kinda weary.

This isn't necessarily a bad state of affairs. I do need to be profound for around half an hour Monday morning, when I'm supposed to give an inspirational welcome talk to entering students. I've done this before, so I think I can pull it off just fine, even if my overall mood is unprofound.

In any event, autumn approaches. The weather has been fantastic and the nights are just a little crisp. I thought I saw the faintest hint of fall color on the maple trees as I drove to campus this morning. But it might have been my imagination. Most of the new students are doing their outdoor orientation trips, returning students are trickling back, and I'm trying to finish up tons of things while also enjoying the last few unscheduled and unstructured blocks of time for a while.

Hot

2009-08-19T20:35:00.002-04:00

It has been annoyingly hot the last few days. It's sufficiently annoying that I cannot fully express my annoyance in the 140 character limit imposed by twitter. Thus, rather than tweet about how I'm annoyed by the heat, I will write a short blog post:

The last few days have been annoying hot. There is no need for it to be this warm. I know it gets a lot hotter in other parts of the world. But this isn't about other parts of the world. This is about Maine. And me. And I'm not in the mood for it to be hot. Happily, tomorrow is supposed to be a little cooler.

That is all.

Pete Tong – the essential selection-sat-08-14-2009

2009-08-15T22:22:00.001-04:00

Pete Tong – the essential selection-sat-08-14-2009: "

Download + Mirrors

Posted in Audio, House, Mix

"

Experimenting with using Google Reader to post to blogger. I'm not sure I like it so far. Let's see what this looks like. Formatting isn't super.

Anyway, I'm listening to this essential section right now and am enjoying it perhaps a little too much. Lots of excellent tracks. Wow.

Hmmmm

2009-08-09T23:59:00.002-04:00

It's been a weird few days. Not necessarily weird in a bad way. But there have been quite a few things that make me go "hmmmmmmm." I've reconnected with some old friends and thought a bunch about transitions. I think I watched a bridge get burned in spectacular fashion. Learned of an old friend who made it though a very difficult medical situation. And of a less old (but older in years) friend who may be facing a difficult medical situation.

The weather has turned drier and a little bit autumn-like. So I've been thinking about the upcoming term and my classes in a more immediate way. Both of my courses I've taught many times before, so there is very little preparation that I need to do in advance. It's mainly a matter of getting myself in the right mindset.

I continue to move along slowly and surely with some writing projects. I've been exercising semi-regularly which has given me more energy and a sore hamstring. A reasonable tradeoff. I have two papers in the queue to referee. Neither look scintillating. One is already overdue, so I should finish my review soon. A few of my tomato plants have tomatoes that are actually turning a little red. The eggplants have barely grown in months.

The summer feels like it's progressing in slow motion. This is good. I will be happy when autumn comes, but I'm also happy for August to linger.

Back from China

2009-07-31T23:06:00.006-04:00

I got back from China around a week and a half ago. It was a good trip. The workshop went well and I had a good time with workshop participants and exploring Beijing. As usual, the weather was hot and humid, the food was excellent, and Beijing was dynamic and crazy and fun. A few highlights and memorable scenes:

It is not uncommon to see t-shirts with random English phrases on them. Often the phrase is a little garbled but the meaning is still somewhat clear, or at least one could imagine why one might want to put such a phrase on a t-shirt. But not always. I twice saw people selling T-shirts with the following words: "Buying food at a cafeteria." The "i"s were dotted with hearts.
Near where I saw these t-shirts there was a book vendor on the street. His cart was mostly filled with English-language books, including quite a few business books. I noted that he had a copy of Capital, by Marx. I picked up the book and thumbed through it. The vendor noticed what I was doing and handed me another book to look at. The book he handed me? Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations.
I heard an incredible set mixed by Sander van Doorn at the GT Banana club. Sander was awesome and the crowd fantastic. Everybody was really into it. A great evening. Returning home at dawn my cab drove by the CCTV building and the large, burned out husk of the CCTV luxury hotel. In the early morning mist it was surreal.

Beijing now feels a tiny bit like a home away from home, especially the neighborhood around Wudaodou and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. I've been fortunate to be able to spend parts of the last six(!) summers in Beijing, and I hope to have to opportunity to spend more time there the next few years.

At the Supermarket in Bar Harbor

2009-07-26T17:04:00.002-04:00

Just got back from some shopping at the local supermarket in Bar Harbor. Mayhem and amusement.

A family of four in the produce section acting kinda like they've never been in a produce section before. Barking questions and commands at each other from across the aisles while the oldest son talks loudly on a cell phone.
Some disturbingly non-local items: avocados from Chile, oranges from South Africa, other oranges from Peru.
A man asked a supermarket worker if they had nail polish remover. Worker doesn't speak great English and doesn't really understand. The questioner explains: "nail polish remover is, ya know, like if you put nail polish on your nails, and then you wanted to take it off, nail polish remover would help you take it off." The questioner's wife came by and asked about the worker about make-up and told her husband to go get trail mix. I didn't stick around to see how it ended. The worker was cheerfully going to get assistance.
I don't think my checkout person had ever seen tomatillos before. But she was very nice about it.
In fairness to the checkout person, it appears that my spell-checker hasn't heard of tomatillos, either.
The person behind me in the checkout line seemed a little alarmed at my purchase. I got three jalapeno peppers and she asserted that I must be about to cook something really spicy. It's all relative, I guess.

Year in Review

2009-07-02T16:37:00.003-04:00

July has started and so the last academic year is officially in the past. A few weeks ago I completed my annual workload report, and I thought it might be interesting to use some of the data I gathered while preparing it to make a year-in-review post. Some bloggers I know do this at the end of the calendar year, but it seems that the end of the academic year is also a good time.

Courses Taught: Calculus I, Theory and Application of Complex Networks, Introduction to Chaos and Fractals, and Calculus II. In a usual year I teach five courses. I only taught four this year because I had a one-trimester sabbatical this spring.
Average Class Size: 20. This is small for most schools, but very high for COA. In most years there are only one or two faculty with a larger average class size.
Number of Advisees: 14, although I lost a few and gained a few over the year.
Independent Studies, Tutorials, Senior Projects: I taught one (very fun) tutorial this year and supervised one senior project. I also assisted on two other senior projects.
Committee Work: Anthropology Search Committee (Search Canceled), Admission Committee, Academic Priorities Group of the Academic Program Review. I also coordinated the Maine Space Grant Consortium Student Research Fellowships and am COA's liaison to the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Fellowship.
Scholarly Presentations. 2, although one of the two is a series of five lectures that I gave in China.
Peer-Reviewed Publications. 1. Feldman, McTague, and Crutchfield, The organization of intrinsic computation: Complexity-entropy diagrams and the diversity of natural information processing. Chaos. 18:043106. 2008.
Book Review: 1. Review of Complex and Adaptive Dynamical Systems: A Primer by Claudius Gros. Physics Today. July 2009.
Book in Progress: My proposal for an introductory textbook on Chaos and Fractals was accepted by Oxford University Press. Deadline is October 15. Current draft is around 275 and I expect the final version to be around 375. Most of the draft was written a few years ago. This year I've written around 75 pages. I have a lot of work to do the next few months.
Papers in Progress: 1. Hopefully it will be submitted in a few weeks.
Papers and Proposals Refereed: 7.
Grants Written: 3. One has been funded ($5000), two are pending ($956,000) and ($150,000).
Countries Traveled to: 5. (China, Germany, Poland, The Netherlands, Canada)
Letters of Recommendation: 47 total letters for 16 different students.
Emails Sent: At least 2418. A little under seven a day. This is just the email from my coa.edu account. This doesn't include email from any of my other accounts.
Emails Received and Saved: At least 2016. I don't know an easy way of figuring out how many emails I received and deleted. I'd guess I only end up saving 1 in 10 emails. If so, then I received around 20,000 emails, or an average of around 55 a day. Again this is only for my coa.edu account.
Tweets Tweeted: 363.
Blog Entries: 35. This is a lot less than the last few years. Twitter has been distracting me from blogging. My interest in blogging has waned somewhat.

All in all, I guess it's been a pretty productive year. It doesn't quite feel that way, but looking back, it wasn't that bad. I had hoped to have one more paper submitted by now and be a little farther along on the textbook.

Graduation

2009-06-06T22:47:00.002-04:00

Today was COA's graduation. And yesterday was our honors/awards ceremony. Both were very nice, as usual. And as usual, it is a time of joy, melancholy, and mixed emotions.

It is, of course, wonderful beyond words to see students graduate, meet families, and offer congratulations. This year there is an especially strong cohort of math and physics students, many of whom I have done independent studies and small research projects with, and who have served as TAs in my classes. So in some ways it seems as if I am losing some colleagues and comrades.

The weather the entire week has been fantastic: warm and green and sunny. Aside from the bugs, it's almost paradise. Today was especially nice. The afternoon was perfect and after the sun set there was a breathtaking moonrise over the mountains.

It is sad to see students go, but it is time. New students will arrive in the fall, and the cycle begins anew. Academic life is cyclical, but it is as if the seasons are backwards. Fall seems like spring, as the academic year begins again with promises of renewal. The summer is more like winter, a dormant and restful time. The quiet on campus is striking the first week after graduation, as if the leaves have just fallen from the trees.

So another year has passed, my eleventh at COA. Another group of students has graduated. The summer now opens up before us, lonely but filled with warmth and quiet promise.

Windpower at COA

2009-05-12T21:10:00.003-04:00

Here is link to a nice news story about a wind turbine that College of the Atlantic just installed at Beech Hill Farm. I had nothing to do with the class, but helped with some of the fund raising for the turbine this winter. We received several generous individual contributions and also support through the Higher Education Program of the Maine Space Grant Consortium.

It's exciting that the turbine is up and running. I hope that one day soon wind turbines will be a common sight in Maine and elsewhere.

Mid Sabbatical

2009-05-10T20:36:00.003-04:00

It's hard to believe, but I'm a little past the halfway point of my spring-term sabbatical. Although it's not really the half-way point, since I have the summer off from teaching as well. Perhaps because of this I haven't quite been able to kick into high gear. I've been productive, I guess, but not spectacularly so. Many days I get a good amount of writing and research done. Other days I just want to cook or organize or work in the garden or around the house. This is a form of productivity, I suppose, but it's not the way to get a lot of research done, which is one of my goals for this sabbatical.

I spent almost three weeks in April in Davis, California. It was an excellent visit. I also spent time in the Bay Area visiting family. Also excellent. All in all, it was great to be someplace different for a while.

Here in Maine, I've been enjoying watching spring unfold in slow motion. There are leaves on many trees now, our tulips are in full blossom, and yesterday a hummingbird returned to our backyard. I've done a lot of yard work and planted a bunch of plants in the garden. Spring in Maine seems like magic. It's hard to imagine that plants come back to life despite having been buried in snow and ice for months. I suppose it's biology, and not magic. But it's still quite impressive.

Just as spring has been in slow motion, I've kinda felt in slow motion too. I leave for another trip to California on Wednesday, and I've got lots that I want to get done before I split. So hopefully the next few days will be productive and fun. I've got much writing and coding and planning to do.

Early spring thoughts

2009-03-29T21:11:00.003-04:00

Our two-week spring break is almost over. Classes start tomorrow, although this doesn't really apply to me, since I'm on sabbatical spring term. (More about that later.)

I've realized that there are a bunch of things I associate with spring break. The most obvious is lots of grading and evaluation writing. This is true for any period right after a term, but it seems especially daunting after winter term, because there are only two weeks before classes start up again. Also, I think I've always taught two classes winter term, so I always have had a lot of evaluations to write.

But in addition to this, there's something distinctive that sticks in my memory about the last two weeks in March. The light is brighter, but it's still cold. I resume running outside, and enjoy the air, even though it's a little colder than I want it to be. The trails are still wet, and often snowy, so I run on gravelly asphalt. A few years ago I tripped while running and cut up my knees and one of my hands. Piles of snow defy the odds and eventually melt.

There is a big rainstorm right now, which is actually quite wonderful. For although it's cold and wet and miserable outside right now, the rain is needed to help melt snow and wash away dirt and grime. When it finally stops I expect the world to look pleasant and cleansed. Flowers and leaves are still a long ways off. But at least the rain will get rid of some of the gritty snow.

I've not given up on this blog entirely. With some more flexible time coming up on my sabbatical I suspect I'll be able to go back to writing at least semi-regularly. I'm also considering retiring this blog and starting a new one. Perhaps a different name/theme/look/whatever will jump start my writing.

2009-02-18T23:31:00.002-05:00

I've been twittering a bunch lately, but I feel like writing in actual sentences. Not sure I'm up for paragraphs, but we'll see what happens.

Driving to campus today I wasn't sure what music to listen to. I ended up choosing a Chinese disco/house CD that I got a few years ago and which I've barely listened to. The lyrics, to the extent that there are any, are mostly in English or Spanish. The mix is kinda hyper and treble-ey, but it actually seemed to fit the day somehow. While driving in, I saw an eagle soaring high above the road. Always an impressive sight.

The reality of the financial slump/recession/depression is gradually becoming more real. I hear and read more and more stories of difficult times. Things aren't so terrible at COA, but nevertheless, times are tight. We're short faculty, and it looks like we'll continue to be short faculty for next year and maybe even the year after that. There's not much to be done, although maybe there are at least a few things that can be done, but I'm not sure anybody is doing them.

I had some skull-crushingly frustrating meetings today. But I had a good class and some good student meetings. And I'm working on a grant proposal that is feeling a little unwieldy at the moment. I really wish I were a faster writer.

Tomorrow we are supposed to get 4-8 inches of snow, followed by a bunch of rain. Splendid.

Random Bullets of Stuff

2009-02-08T23:48:00.003-05:00

Minimally motivated to post a blog update, but not motivated to write paragraphs. So, random bullets:

I did a fair amount of grading this weekend, but I should have done more.
All three of our cats have had colds. Apple and Monster are mostly over theirs. Ancho is still in the midst of his. His sneezes are quite impressive.
For some reason my eyes are goopy and very itchy right now. It's pretty annoying. I hope I don't have the cats' cold.
Today was a mini-thaw. It got up to 42 degrees, and it almost smelled like spring for a little bit. Lots of slush.
The birds at our feeder must have smelled spring, too, since they were chirping much more than usual.
But now the slush has frozen and there are many slippery, icy spots on roads and sidewalks.
The extra light in the afternoon is very noticable. Spring is still months away, but at least it's getting light later.
The moonrise this evening was amazing.
I'm drinking a Fin du Monde. Delicious. A nice change from Dogfish Head.
We've eaten well this weekend. On Saturday I made a tasty spinach salad and a pasta dish with roasted onions and chard. Today Doreen made a slightly weird but excellent minestrone-like thing.
I'm not quite ready for the week. Hard to believe we're at the half-way point of the term.

Miscellaneous Musings

2009-02-02T00:02:00.002-05:00

I've been writing lots of letters of recommendation for students applying to do summer research somewhere. I often go to the web page of the deparment or institute that will be hosting the students. There are usually a few pictures to go with the website, designed, presumably, to encourage good students to apply. The pictures for field biology programs are usually from some scene outdoors, often quite scenic, and most of the time with some animals being studies: perhaps birds of lizards or something. The biomedical program's pictures involve some combination of lab coats, microscopes, beakers, and pipettes. The math department pictures? Well ... not so hot. Sometimes it's a few people sitting at a table. Other times it is a posed shot of last year's students, usually taken in front of a blackboard.
My spell-checker wants to turn the word "combinatorics" into "dominatrix." Accepting this change would surely make my letter more interesting, but probably not in a way that would help the student who is applying.
Speaking of spell checking, there is one undergrad research program web page on which the city in which the university resides is spelled wrong.
And finally, a non-letter-of-recommendation-writing observation. Last night I was reading a quite interesting research paper by, I would guess, a non-native English speaker. The author meant, I assume, to say "manipulating the parameters, we obtain ..." Instead, he wrote, "mangling the parameters, we obtain." Awesome.

Not gone forever

2009-01-30T23:50:00.002-05:00

I've been neglecting this blog, and instead focusing on teaching and grant writing and other stuff. Life has been busy and somewhat stressful, but mostly in a good way. We just finished the fourth week of the term and so far as I can tell, classes are going well. It's been a pretty productive month. I've done a better job than I usually do of staying productive and on top of things. I'm still behind, especially in keeping up with some email conversations and I've only been so-so about grading. But nevertheless, I feel like I'm on a bit of a roll. I'm not sure exactly why. Some of it is having a great mix of classes: Chaos and Fractals, Calculus II, and a tutorial/independent study on Statistics. They're all really different, which is fun.

Also, I moved into a much bigger office right before I left for Germany and Poland in December. The added space has been fantastic. It's made a much bigger difference than I had imagined. I didn't realize how cramped I was in my old office. I can now easily meet with more than one student at a time, I've got a blackboard, and I have enough room to actually organize my books. I'm very pleased.

In other news, January has been a messy month in terms of weather. There have been a number of sloppy storms, and it's gotten "evil cold", to use Andrew's phrase. But we've survived. On really, really cold mornings it's very hard to remember that it was once warm and that it will get warm again. But the days are getting longer and the light a little brigher. So spring will come. Eventually.

Anyway... I may try to get back to posting regularly here. Or I may not for a little while. Sometimes I feel a tiny bit angsty about not posting, but not now. I figure I'll post when the blogging muse visits. In the meantime, I'll certainly continue to twitter and facebook and such.

Merry Christmas

2008-12-25T16:44:00.007-05:00

I'm back from Germany and Poland. It was an excellent trip. Doreen and I each came down with a cold right before we returned home. So we've spent the last two days coughing and sneezing, hanging out with the cats, doing some good cooking, and enjoying the warmth of the woodstove. Life could be much worse.

The cats by the woodstove

Doreen and me by the Berlin Wall

There are many more pictures from Germany and Poland on my picassa page.

Disappearing for a little bit

2008-12-13T04:41:00.002-05:00

In just a few hours I'm beginning a journey to Berlin, where I'll meet Doreen. We'll hang out in Berlin for a few days and then head to Krakow for a bit. Then back to Berlin and then we fly home right before Christmas.

It was a pretty insane week, but I finished all my narrative evaluations and finished moving my office. Still lots to do, but at least I got a lot crossed off my lists the last few days. I'm really looking forward to not being on email for a week, exploring some European cities, reading, and chilling out.

An Icy Thursday

2008-12-11T23:25:00.004-05:00

A scattered update. No motivation for paragraphs:

There's an interesting ice/sleet/rain storm going on. I just wandered outside and noted that my car is completely encased in 1/8 inch of ice. Maine: the way life should be, only icier.
Why is it that my "break" thus far as seemed busier than the term?
Possibly it's because I have 47 narrative evaluations to write.
Happily, I'm done with (drafts of) all but three evals.
But to write the next eval I need to look at some assignments, which would require getting up, which would disturb the cat that is sound asleep on my lap.
"Area" on my satellite radio is playing a fantastic selection of trance tonight. Perfect for an icy night of coffee and grading. Music like this makes me never want to sleep again.
The sleeping cat just stood up, rotated 180 degrees (Pi radians) and went back to sleep on my lap.
Started a letter of recommendation that I need to finish in the next few days.
The fire is dying and it's getting cold, so the sleeping cat will need to be moved. I think she'll get over it.

Monday

2008-11-24T23:49:00.002-05:00

Today was a moderately productive but not scintillating day. So I will aim for a moderate-length, not scintillating update. It's gray and chilly and looked quite wintery today. It's supposed to warm up slightly tonight in advance of a windy and rainy storm. I moved some firewood into the mud room and finally put away the lawn mower and weed wacker for the winter. After dealing with recycling, I headed into the big city of Ellsworth to do automotive errands. I was moderately successful. I got my headlight fixed (it was just a broken bulb, apparently), my oil changed, and my car inspected. I was not able to get my snow tires put on. But I have an appointment for Friday. So that means another trip to the big city. Exciting.

Grading progresses slowly. But it's moving along. In addition to writing evals, I've got a bunch of other projects, large and small, that I need to work on the next several weeks. Some I'm pretty excited about, and others are not too inspirational. Tonight I need to do some work on a document that falls into the latter category. Time to grab a beer and see if I can find even a little bit of inspiration so I can write a few paragraphs that are sufficiently peppy and positive.

End of the Term

2008-11-21T21:07:00.003-05:00

Today was the last day of fall term. Overall I feel like it was a good term. In both of my classes there was a critical mass of students working hard and interested in the material. I am now faced with very large quantities of grading and lots of evaluations to write. There are also a bunch of other writing projects that I need to work on, as well as lots of errands and correspondence. It's a lot to think about. I'm looking forward to getting some rest the next few days and then getting to work and crossing some things off my list.

Doreen and I had a tasty dinner at Guinness and Porcelli's to celebrate the end of the term. We're now in the living room with a warm fire and three sleepy cats. I'm blogging and web surfing and listening to a Trance around the World epsiode while Doreen reads a Harry Potter book.

Autumn Chills

2008-10-20T23:45:00.003-04:00

It's definitely autumn now. The leaves are still bright, but they're falling rapidly. We had a hard frost last night. The lawn was white and frosty in patches. We've been building fires in our woodstove for a few weeks now. Today it was brisk outside and a little chilly in my poorly heated office on campus. In March, this would have felt like a warm day. But it's not March, it's mid October. So it felt cold.

I've been following the election quite closely, and like many have been chilled some by the tone of the rhetoric the last several weeks. Nasty politics is one thing, but the last few weeks have been alarming. The mob-like crowds at some of the McCain/Palin rallies are tough to watch. Quite likely what I see on youtube and other blogs isn't representative of most of the rallies, and certainly isn't representative of most McCain supports. But nevertheless, it's chilling.

I don't really know how to put my discomfort to words. I'm not so much angry at McCain or Palin as I am simply sad or disheartened. There seems to be an undercurrent to the campaign which mocks the very things we should be celebrating. This started at the convention, where two speakers were contemptuous of the idea of community organizing. It continues with this notion that small town America is the "real" america, and that some parts of the country are more "pro-American" than others. And then there's the use of the word Muslim in a way intended to conjure up fear and suspicion.

In the last several days I found two good responses to this madness from two very different sources. The first is from General Colin Power in his endorsement of Barak Obama. It's a powerful response to the divisiveness of the season. It's worth listening to. Powell's discussion of Islam not being anti-American is quite striking and effective. (This is at around 4:45 of the clip.) Yes, I know that Powell is an establishment figure, and he's not exactly a hero of mine. But nevertheless I found his comments quite moving.

I also recently read a graceful post, What a Beautiful World by Tim Burke. He eloquently gives voice to some of what I've been feeling the last few weeks, in a far, far more coherent and articulate way than I ever could.

Random Bullets of Whateverness

2008-10-08T21:47:00.002-04:00

It's been a while since I've posted an update here. I've been focusing what little blogging energy I have on twittering and posting over at betweenness, the blog for the Complex Networks class that I'm teaching. I don't have the energy for actual paragraphs or transition sentences. So instead, I'll opt for the genre of the random bullets.

Sometimes you hear something so dumb that it makes you gasp or immediately clutch your head for fear that your brain has imploded. These moments cause not only cognitive dissonance, but some sort of physiological response bordering on actual pain. Well, today I experienced at least three such moments, possibly four. It will take days to recover. At this point I believe a full recovery is possible. But this will depend on there not being any other such moments during my recovery period.
I have a cold. It's not terrible, but it's annoying. Mostly I have a sore throat, and I've kinda had a headache, too. I've been taking Golden Throat Lozenges. I get them when I'm in China. Some friends of mine and I refer to them as "little pills that make things better."
Speaking of which, I wonder if tiaa-cref has some option where we can put our retirement savings in heroin or cocaine. I bet this would be a much better investment than whatever stocks or bonds we currently own.
Here is another interesting investment opportunity: fluffy kitties.
On a related note, our kittens grow. They haven't broken or destroyed anything recently, and Ancho has stopped licking my face when I'm trying to sleep. Ancho seems determined to eat the flowers off our Christmas Cactus. But this doesn't bother me as much as it bothers Doreen. I figure there are a lot of flowers on their way, and if Ancho really wants to eat a few it's probably ok.

Bert and Ernie: Gangsta Awesomeness

2008-09-24T00:10:00.002-04:00

I think this is unspeakably awesome. (Hat tip to Edge of the American West.) Check it out.

End of Week One

2008-09-19T22:58:00.003-04:00

The first full week of the term is over, and so far, so good. So far as I can tell, both of my classes are going well. Calculus is large, by COA standards, at least. So it will take a while to get to know everyone. Calc is always a fun topic to teach, and I'm glad lots of people are interested in it. My new class on complex networks is also lots of fun. It's forcing me to solidify my understanding of certain topics, which is always a good thing. I've already done a lot of interesting reading for the class, and lots more lies ahead.

Speaking of the networks class, I've set up a class blog, betweenness. I'm doing some blogging over there, as are (eventually) all the students.

The week ended with clear, cool autumn weather. Doreen and I had a nice dinner at Havana to celebrate the end of the week. As always, their mushroom spring roll appetizers were incredible. The tofu/mushroom entree was also great. I'm now at home, blogging and reading feeds and listening to trance around the world. Life is good.

Of Root Vegetables and Refereeing

2008-09-17T22:59:00.003-04:00

I just finished a referee report for a journal. Unfortunately the paper wasn't terribly good, so my recommendation was to reject. This is the third paper or proposal in a row that I've refereed that was pretty bad. Worse, the papers weren't even bad in an interesting way. Bummer. Reviewing such papers isn't that inspiring.

Another bummer was dinner today, which featured two dishes with root vegetables. They were quite good, but the root vegetables were diced unevenly. This means that they cooked unevenly. Which is to say that some were soft and delicious and a few were crunchy and a little scary.

Nevertheless, I think I'd prefer the occasional crunchy beet or turnip to a long string of poorly written papers and proposals to review.

The kittens grow

2008-09-13T14:49:00.004-04:00

The top picture is from May. The bottom picture is from late August. The kittens eat voraciously and seem to be very happy in their new home.

We decided to name the orange guy Ancho, which means "wide" in spanish. He's broad-shouldered and chunky, so Ancho seems to fit.

Approximately Irrational Road Repair?

2008-09-07T23:17:00.004-04:00

There is some road work being done right near our house. I think it's just some simple repaving. As one drives up to the place where the roadwork will start, there is one of those rectangular signs alerting motorists that there will be road construction for a little while. In particular, the sign says:

Roadwork next 1.41 Miles

This raises a number of questions. First, how many digits are really needed? Would alerting drivers that the construction will last for 1.4 miles be sufficient? How can the additional one hundredth of a mile matter?

But maybe the 1.41 arose because they were trying to approximate the square root of two. Maybe the construction follows the hypotenuse of an isosceles triangle whose legs have a length of one mile. The stretch of road is sufficiently curvey that this doesn't seem to be a possibility. Nevertheless, it's a fun thing to think about.

Transition to Fall

2008-09-01T20:00:00.004-04:00

We're back from a nice five days in Quebec. And now Doreen hass gone to Amsterdam for some meetings. The weather in Maine has been wonderfully warm. Today was beautiful, warm but not hot, breezy and sunny. Just about perfect. But there are some sure signs that fall is almost here:

Some maple trees are already turning just a little bit orange.
There is Halloween candy prominently displayed at the grocery store.
It was quite dark by 7:40 today.
New students arrived yesterday. They then left this morning for their outdoor orientation trips. I spoke to parents of new students yesterday as part of our welcome-to-campus events. I've done this a lot over the last few years, and it's a fun event.

As usual, I have mixed but mostly positive thoughts as the start of the school year draws near. I'll miss the unstructured time I had in August, but at the same time I'm looking forward to getting back into a routine.

Heading North

2008-08-23T10:36:00.003-04:00

Doreen and I are heading to the Saguenay region of Quebec for some kayaking and camping and other adventures. We return Thursday night. As usual, we're taking a while to pack and we aren't getting an early start. We will probably spend tonight in Riviere-du-loup and will take the Ferry across to the north shore of the St. Lawrence tomorrow.

Friday

2008-08-22T23:55:00.006-04:00

It's been a disjointed week: a combination of annoying, productive, tedious, and fun. The fun parts included some great weather and a few really good meals. I made some salads, but most of the cooking was done by Doreen. Thursday night she made an awesome spicy Indian potato dish that was perked up with yummy fresh mint. She also baked some absolutely incredible lemon bars. They were somewhat more delicate than typical lemon bars, probably because of the addition of lavendar. Tonight she made an excellent fritatta type dish with chard and onions and such. Both nights we had nice salads featuring home-grown tomatoes.

The majorly annoying parts of my week I probably shouldn't blog about. Minorly annoying parts included mildly pulling my hamstring.

The Maine Space Grant Consortium meeting was a little tedious, but as I suspected, it was a chance to meet some interesting people doing interesting things. So that part was fun, and, in a sense, productive.

Also productive was doing some ok work on one of my writing projects. Nothing super or terribly deep, but I feel like I actually have some momentum now. I also did some interesting reading about networks and thought a bunch about my fall class.

It's now pretty late on Friday night. Time to watch an episode of the X-files.

Heading to Northport

2008-08-17T22:45:00.003-04:00

Today was a beautiful summer Maine day. I mowed the front and the back lawns, did some weeding in the gardens, and fertililzed the vegetables. The garden is doing very well. We've already had a few tasty tomatoes, and many, many more are on the way. A few jalapeno peppers are ready to be picked, and it looks like we'll even get a few eggplants in a week or so. We will also have many tomatillos. After doing yard work we were both pretty hot, so we went for a quick swim at Echo Lake. Not a bad afternoon. This evening I did some reading and a little bit of coding.

Tomorrow I drive to Northport for a two-day board and affiliate meeting of the Maine Space Grant Consortium. I think the purpose of the meeting is to help with MSGC's five-year review and also give input for their next strategic plan. The agenda for the meeting is not very specific, which leaves me quite nervous. The meeting has the potential to be absolutely dreadful. But even if the meeting itself is dull, I expect that I'll get to meet some interesting scientists and researchers from around Maine. I'll be quite interested to see who else is at the meeting. The meeting will be held at Point Lookout, which appears to be a very nice resort/conference center on the coast. So I suspect that it will be pretty comfortable and the food will be good.

Cooking and Stuff

2008-08-17T12:27:00.002-04:00

Yesterday (Saturday) I managed to not go online at all, which was a nice break. Friday and Saturday I did a bunch of cooking. Friday I made a leek/beet green pizza. I had intended to use chard, but was cooking quickly and grabbed the beet greens my mistake. The pizza was good, and it was quite quick to make since I used pre-made dough that I got at the store.

Yesterday I made a lentil and chard dish that I served over bulghur, and also a leek and flageolet bean soup. Flageolet beans are dried beans that are skinny and green and have a very delicate taste. A picture of them is here. I learned yesterday, though, that they're basically baby kidney beans. Odd.

Last night I spent a while reading about networks and thinking about my class in the fall. All in all, a nice day. Today it's sunny, so I think I'll mow the lawn and do some garden work.

Bullets of Mild Crankiness

2008-08-14T22:54:00.002-04:00

My car is wired such that one of the things that makes the "check engine" light go on is the gas cap being not screwed on tightly. Once this happens, I'm not aware of any way for me to make the light go off other than going to a car repair place. Whoever came up with this feature should be shot.
I pulled my left quad playing ultimate today. It's not bad, just annoying.
In the midst of doing some writing I realized that I didn't understand something that I thought I did. Annoying. Good to know that I don't know something. This is one of the good things about writing. But still annoying.
I'm tired.
I think there's something else I'm annoyed about, but I can't remember.

Chair Chair?

2008-08-13T20:43:00.002-04:00

Apparently the Savannah College of Art and Design is searching for a Chair of Furniture Design. Awesome.

Errands

2008-08-13T16:35:00.004-04:00

I'm currently at The Maine Grind in Ellsworth trying to get some work done. I've done a little bit of coding and a little bit of writing. I like this place. They have ok sandwiches and coffee, free wireless, and it's a nice place to work. I've only been here a few times, but I've usually been fairly productive here. It's not the hippest of cafes, but, well, Ellsworth isn't the hippest of towns. Nevertheless, it's not bad. If it were closer to home, I could see spending quite a bit of time here.

I came to Ellsworth with the goal of doing a bunch of errands and have been only partially successful. I bought new wiper blades at a car parts place and later got my oil changed. Two successes. I wanted to get cleats at Cadillac Mountain Sports, since my cleats wore out a while ago and I'm getting tired of playing ultimate in running shoes. But they didn't have any cleats that felt remotely comfortable. I think I'll be more comfortable in football cleats, as this is what I've always worn in the past. Cadillac Mountain had only soccer cleats, and apparently soccer players have skinny little feet. I also went to the bank to deposit some checks and was only partially successful. We had two checks from the IRS, but apparently Doreen and I both needed to sign them, as they were made out to both of us. This didn't make much sense to me, since both of our names are on the account into which I wanted to deposit them, and in years past we didn't need two signatures. The bank people claimed that this was a federal law and not their rule. Arg.

Soon I will leave this little cafe and head home via the Ellsworth Hannaford, where I will pick up some groceries and also return a bunch of returnable bottles. I'm on deck to cook dinner tonight, but I haven't yet decided what I'll make. Possibly a thai red curry noodles dish that I like. It's easy to cook and I haven't made it for a while.

Slow Progress

2008-08-12T00:32:00.003-04:00

Today was a day of slow progress on some writing tasks. I'm not moving fast, but I might be very slowly gaining momentum. I also did some reading and went for a short run. The last week I've been trying to run shorter distances somewhat faster than I usually do. Fast is relative. I'm still slow. But longer runs were turning into something that wasn't quite a run any more: perhaps a trot. So I'm aiming for shorter, non-trot runs. I also did a load of laundry, weeded the back garden a little, and cleaned up some around the house. Another thrilling day.

Yesterday (Sunday) was a day of visiting with friends and only going on the computer once. We had friends over and I did some major cooking: caribbean red beans, coconut rice, tomato salad, kale, and a sweet potato gratin. All turned out pretty good. The sweet potato gratin was pretty interesting. It didn't have any cheese. Instead the cheesy-ness was supplied by coconut milk and starch from the sweet potatoes. The gratin also had some lime juice, garlic, spinach, some black beans, and a little bit of rice. It was tasty and rich.

There's not a ton of other news. The weather has been nice. Cool and partly sunny. Tomorrow I will spend the day on campus. In addition to getting some writing done, I've got some on-campus errands and I want to continue to clean up my office and organize. I should also start on the two uninspiring documents for which I need to write referee reports.

Sunshine and Armin van Buuren

2008-08-10T00:04:00.004-04:00

For the first time in a week it was sunny. So I mowed the lawn, which was quite a task, as it had been several weeks since it had been cut and the grass was still a little wet. I also weeded the gardens and did lots of trimming and tidying. I did a load of laundry and was able to dry it outside. Doreen made an Indian eggplant dish and some somewhat-Indian beets. I made a cucumber and tomato salad. The tomatoes and the feta are local, and the cucumbers were from our garden. Delicious.

I'm now listening to Armin van Buuren's A State of Trance while I do some writing. One of our kittens is playing with a toy mouse. Soon I will stop writing and devote full attention to Armin and the kittens.

Dreary and Pleasant

2008-08-08T22:15:00.004-04:00

Today was also a slightly lazy day, but for some reason I feel much better about it than yesterday. I got some very good news via email this morning. I'll blog about it in a week or two once things become more official. But suffice it to say that it put me in a very good mood. I worked at home online for a while and then embarked on the task of re-organizing my CDs. There were large stacks of CDs on top of our stereo waiting to be re-shelved. But there was no urgency until a few days ago, when the cats managed to knock them all over. So it was time to restore order. The task took a lot longer than I had originally anticipated. I ended up pulling a lot of CDs out of my car, too, and reshelved them too. This necessitated quite a bit of rearrangement, as we seem to have gotten quite a few additional CDs since my last organizational effort. One fun aspect of this, in addition to the sheer joy of alphabetizing things, was that I re-discovered some CDs of mine. Finds included Be a Bright Blue, by Saxon Shore, day one: ordinary man, and a live Wayne Shorter disc.

It was rainy and dark and almost cold in the afternoon. The rain fell gently and steadily. Tourists mourned while I rejoiced. Well, maybe I wasn't rejoicing, but it was extremely pleasant. I did dishes. I did laundry. Doreen made cookies. Later, when the rain stopped for a bit I went for a short run. Then I made spicy tofu and rice. Soon Doreen and I will watch an episode of the X-files and we will celebrate the morning's good news with a good Belgian beer.

Not much

2008-08-07T22:09:00.002-04:00

Today has been a day of working a bunch but seemingly getting very little done. I'm not sure how days like these happen. I tracked down some snippets of code that I need for a chapter that I'm writing. I dealt with a lot of email, pushing my inbox to under 200. Although I didn't really do much; mostly I just filed a bunch of old messages. I did send a few emails, though, and I also downloaded a few references and filed them in citulike. I also decided to switch from using korganizer to google calendar. So I exported from korganizer to ical and then imported to google. It all went smoothly. I also upgraded a lot the software on my desktop at school, and downloaded the latest version of ubuntu so I can install it on my home machines.

All in all, I accomplished very little. It's good to get organized, but there's a lot of other, real work that I need to do. I've got two referee reports to write, one of a paper and one of a grant proposal. Neither of them are at all inspiring. And I have several writing projects of my own that I should be chipping away at. I've been doing some work, but it's going slow. And there are also some things I need to do to get ready for the fall term.

Today was a cool Maine summer day. The tourists probably didn't like it, but it's fine with me. After almost five weeks in Beijing, cool, cloudy weather is great. When I left campus to drive downtown to play in Bar Harbor's twice weekly ultimate game, there was almost a hint of crispness in the air. Perfect. The only downside to the weather is that it's been a little damp. I don't mind rain, but it does make it difficult to dry clothes on the line and mow the lawn.

This might have been the most boring post ever. Oh well. Time to stop rambling. There's half an hour before the Daily Show starts. Perhaps I can get a tiny bit of coding done before then.

Joys of Sendmail

2008-08-06T16:37:00.003-04:00

Yesterday I spent a while dealing with some very strange email problems. Starting on Monday, when I got back from Portland, I wasn't able to email from my machine to some other email addresses. For example, I could send email to a gmail account, but anything to coa.edu bounced instantly. The error message was odd and difficult to interpret. I figured that this wasn't a problem on my end, but that it had something to do with the UMaine servers. (UMaine does our internet access, and email to coa.edu goes through one of their big servers.) I queried our helpful network administrator, who queried someone at UMaine. They were convinced that the problem was with my email server, not theirs.

I didn't believe them. But I started investigating. The error message that I was getting was really weird. Something about a "server not found" which is odd, because I could ping all the relevant servers I could think of and everybody was alive. After much googling and pondering I figured out what the problem was. It turns out that I am using a version of sendmail with an odd little bug in it. Here's what happened.

Over the weekend the campus lost power. Not a big deal. This happens relatively frequently and my machine has always come back online without trouble. This time, though, things didn't go so smoothly. Once the power was restored, my machine boots up. As sendmail is bringing itself to life, it needs to figure out who it is -- i.e., what its hostname is. To do so, it looks to a nameserver of some sort of figure out the name of localhost. However, the nameserver, or perhaps the network itself, wasn't back online yet. So the server query takes a while and times out, with the message: "connection timed out; no servers could be reached".

So far, so good. Except my version of sendmail is quite literal. It doesn't recognize this as an error. Rather, it now thinks its hostname is "connection timed out; no servers could be reached". Brilliant. Then, when emailing, my machine was contacting the UMaine server and telling it that my name was "connection timed out; no servers could be reached". Quite understandably, Umaine doesn't like this name, and thus refused to talk to me. The mail bounced instantly, with a misleading message about "no servers could be reached". Some other mail hosts also wouldn't talk to me, but others, such as gmail, would.

Once I figured this out, it took a while to fix but it wasn't too bad. I'm not sure my fix is permanent, however. Things could go nutty again if there's another power outage. Something to look forward to, I suppose.

Adding to the fun is that an email I sent to someone at UC Davis tripped some other warning system, causing me to get listed on the Composite Blocking List. It wasn't too difficult to get myself delisted.

This bug seems to be limited to ubuntu/debian versions of linux. See bug reports here and here if you're curious.

Not how I planned on spending Tuesday afternoon. But at least the problem is resolved and my computer is happy and playing well with others.

Complexity-Entropy Diagrams

2008-08-05T10:52:00.006-04:00

While I was in China, my collaborators and I finally finished a paper and submitted it to the journal Chaos and posted it to the arXiv. We started this paper in 2002. There's no good reason that it took this long to finish. Some of the numerics were a little tricky, and it took some thought to figure out the best way to present some of the results. But mostly other responsibilities kept getting in the way of finishing the manuscript.

But now it's done, and I'm quite happy with it. In the "micro-field" of measures of physical comnplexity, there has been much discussion of how complexity and entropy might be related. In this paper, rather than discuss things in abstract terms, we took one well understood complexity measure, the excess entropy, and calculated it for a wide range of model systems. (The excess entropy is also known as the effective measure complexity and the predictive information.) The product of these calculations is a set of results showing a range of possible complexity vs. entropy behaviors. I hope that this paper puts to rest claims of a universal complexity-entropy curve and the notion that complexity must always be sharply maximized at intermediate entropy. (Actually, I know that this paper won't even come close to accomplishing this. But this nevertheless remains my hope.)

More generally, I think this paper implicitly suggests that there are complexity measures which are well known and well understood, and so researchers should stop trying to devise new complexity measures, unless there is some compelling reason to do so. (And most such "new complexity measure" papers that I've seen recently don't offer reasons I find compelling.) Also, I hope that this paper prompts others to carry out some calculations for the excess entropy or other complexity measures. The excess entropy isn't that difficult to calculate and is clear and straightforward to interpret.

In any event, the abstract and a link to the full paper on the arXiv follow:

David P. Feldman, Carl S. McTague, James P. Crutchfield, The Organization of Intrinsic Computation: Complexity-Entropy Diagrams and the Diversity of Natural Information Processing.

Intrinsic computation refers to how dynamical systems store, structure, and transform historical and spatial information. By graphing a measure of structural complexity against a measure of randomness, complexity-entropy diagrams display the range and different kinds of intrinsic computation across an entire class of system. Here, we use complexity-entropy diagrams to analyze intrinsic computation in a broad array of deterministic nonlinear and linear stochastic processes, including maps of the interval, cellular automata and Ising spin systems in one and two dimensions, Markov chains, and probabilistic minimal finite-state machines. Since complexity-entropy diagrams are a function only of observed configurations, they can be used to compare systems without reference to system coordinates or parameters. It has been known for some time that in special cases complexity-entropy diagrams reveal that high degrees of information processing are associated with phase transitions in the underlying process space, the so-called ``edge of chaos''. Generally, though, complexity-entropy diagrams differ substantially in character, demonstrating a genuine diversity of distinct kinds of intrinsic computation.

Back

2008-08-04T10:29:00.002-04:00

I'm back in the U.S. and back in Maine. Last Tuesday I returned to Maine from Beijing. Due to a long delay in Newark, the total door-to-door time for the journey was around thirty hours. But I made it. After two somehwat jetlagged days at home, I drove to Portland on Friday where I met Doreen, who had flown into Boston that morning from Amsterdam. Then on Saturday we were joined by my brother, sister-in-law, and young nephew. It was very fun to see them, and it was actually the first time that Doreen met her nephew. We drove back Sunday.

It is now Monday morning, and I'm thrilled that I've essentially got three weeks of continuous home time. I have lots of work stuff that I want to do, as well as some organizational projects at home and the office. And I'm looking forward to doing some cooking and getting some exercise.

As an experiment, I'm going to try and blog daily for the next three weeks. I've been having mixed feelings about whether or not I should continue this blog. I've not posted much of late, so maybe forcing myself to post more will reinvigorate things. Or, it will make it clear that I need a blogging hiatus.

In China

2008-06-27T09:49:00.000-04:00

My flights were long, but mostly uneventful and I made it to Beijing without incident. I slept a little bit on the plane, and I slept for a long time last night. I'm not over jetlag yet, but I'm making progress.

I'm currently at the WuKe Bingyuan, the hotel at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Tomorrow, I head out to the Fragrant Villa, the "resort" on the northwest edge of Beijing where we hold the school for the first week. It was fun today spending time in the neighborhood by the CAS. I've spent quite a bit of time here the last several years, so it's sort of like home.

Beijing is, as usual, a little overwhelming. The pollution has been bad the last few days, but I've seen it worse. And it's been surprisingly cool, which is nice. I'm sure the infernos will arrive soon enough.

There's a little sign in the bathroom at the hotel which, presumably, is intended to warn me that the floor might be slippery. But somehow this got rendered into English as "Be Careful of Landslides." Awesome.

I'm too tired to write more. More later when I find the time and energy.

Heading to China

2008-06-25T02:38:00.002-04:00

In a little over four hours I'll be on a plane to Newark. Then a few hours layover and then a fourteen hour flight to Beijing. I will try to post semi-regularly in China, but it will depend on whether or not blogger is blocked.

w r i t i n g

2008-06-19T01:07:00.002-04:00

I leave for China in less than one week. Yikes.
In addition to grading and writing evaluations, I'm working on writing two proposals. They're going well, but slowly. Very slowly.
I'm making some good progress tonight, but it's late and I should go to sleep soon.
But I'm listening to Armin van Buuren, which usually makes me pleasantly hyper and energized. Good for writing. Bad for sleep.
Speaking of sleep, a kitten is sound asleep next to me.
Our little kittens are growing fast, but they're still small and very cute. The orange one has a name now, but I'll blog about that later.
Back to writing for me.

Links of Awesomeness

2008-06-17T01:18:00.003-04:00

Some amusing things I've stumbled across lately:

We do stuff at Huhcorp. "When one of our new-age marketing gurus or design experts or consultants has an idea, the rest of us look at him or her with serious expressions and write stuff down on paper. We also have one of those dry-erase boards on the wall, and we take turns making flow-charts and brain-storming and talking about "injecting creativity into market positioning," and cool stuff like that." Awesome.
Huhcorp has a tech division, duhcorp. Also awesome.
Then there's the Nietzsche Family Circus, which pairs a random Nietzsche quote with a random Family Circus cartoon. More awesome.
And finally there's something which I think actually isn't a joke... Worried that the rapture will come and you'll be raptured away and friends and family will be left behind? Perhaps there are some final emails you'd like to send them, but you won't be able to, because you'll be up in heaven, or wherever it is that raptured pepole go--presumably someplace without internet access. Well, worry no more. Youvebeenleftbehind.com will automatically send emails to your friends and family who have been left behind. The emails are sent six days post-rapture. For just $40 a year you can send messages to up to 62 different email addresses. Yet more awesome.

(Items 3 and 4 via Casting Out Nines.)

Week 11

2008-06-14T12:37:00.003-04:00

We just finished week eleven of our ten-week term. Graduation was a week ago. The ceremony was quite nice, as usual. It didn't last too long, there were some interesting and touching talks, and there was excellent food at the reception afterwards. I got to talk to a lot of graduates, their families, and also some alums who had returned for the event.

Week elevens are usually fairly unproductive and involve mostly recovering and regaining physical and mental strength. The day after graduation, Doreen and I headed to Boston to spend a few days visiting my Dad and his wife. He lives in New Jersey, but we sometimes get together in Boston, as it's easier to meet halfway than to have one of us do a very long drive. Boston was fun. We had an excellent meal at The Red House on Sunday, and on Monday we had an absolutely extraoradinary meal at Oleanna. On Monday we went to the Museum of Science, which was good, but not quite amazing. I think it's more set up for kids than adults. Nevertheless, there were some interesting exhibits and I'm glad we went. Doreen and I also did some bookshopping at some of the excellent bookstores in Cambridge.

The weather in Boston was miserable: humid and very hot. On Tuesday it hit 103 degrees. Monday was in the high 90's. I suppose the weather was good practice for Beijing, where it will be equally hot, and much, much, much smoggier. Fortunately, the weather did not follow us home. By the time we were 15 miles across the Maine border the temperature was down to 72 degrees.

The nice weather continued throughout the week. Wednesday and Thursday were long days of work, trying to get caught up on email and lots of little things that have been slipping through the cracks lately. I made good progress, but I've still got a long way to go. I also have a very large pile of grading and I have a few larger projects that I really should finish up before I leave for China.

Yesterday, though, Doreen and I took off from work and did some gardening and took a nice hike in the afternoon. The weather was almost perfect. Warm but not hot, and sunny and clear. From the top of Beech Hill, the view was fantastic. We had a nice dinner which included a salad made from lettuce grown in our backyard.

It is now Saturday, and week eleven is ending and week twelve begins. The recovery week is over. This needs to be a week of much productivity.

The Term Ends

2008-06-06T21:16:00.002-04:00

It's hard to believe, but the 2007-08 academic year is over. Tomorrow is graduation. It's been a long year, and one that felt more difficult than usual. Fall term seems impossibly distant -- it seems a very long ways away. I did a lot of teaching this year, and I had some very strong classes. There's a really good cohort of math students on campus right now, which is a lot of fun. But it keeps me busy.

The end of the year is always a mixture of joy and melancholy. Graduation and related events are truly wonderful. It's great to congratulate seniors and marvel at their accomplishments. It's especially fun to meet students' families and share congratulations. Without a doubt, graduation is a highlight of the year. It's sad, though, to be saying goodbye to some students. And it's also difficult to say goodbye to a few faculty colleagues who are leaving COA.

I've got a bunch of things I've been meaning to blog about. Perhaps now that the term is over I'll have some more time and will get caught up. However, despite the fact that the term is over, I've still got a lot of work to do. In addition to grading and writing evaluations, there are a number of writing tasks that I absolutely have to finish before I head to China. My plane leaves on June 25, so I've got around 2.5 weeks. A lot of time, but I'm sure it'll go quickly. Tonight, though, I'm going to try and not think about deadlines and just relax.

Mumbling Messages

2008-06-01T00:06:00.003-04:00

Doreen has been away traveling for a few weeks. During this time a number of people have called and left messages for her on our answering machine. I am tasked with relaying these messages to her. Four of the messages over the last two weeks have been incomprehensible for one reason or another. One message was from a plumber calling on a bad cell phone connection, so every other word was chopped off. One message was static-ey and I couldn't tell if it was in Spanish or English or some combination, and the person didn't leave a number. There was somebody else who was mostly understandable and did leave a number to call. She helpfully repeated her number. This was great, except the two numbers didn't match. Most recently, there was a call from someone who kinda sounded Czech, but when she said her name and the organization she worked for it blurred together as one very long word of 20 syllables or so that I can't parse, even after multiple listenings.

More COA in the News

2008-05-25T23:39:00.003-04:00

There's a great article about Howdy Houghton in Orion magazine. And online version can be found here: A Voice for Downeast Maine. Howdy is a great guy and an extremely valuable member of COA and the broader community. It's awesome to see him get some well deserved praise.
And there's a nice article about COA student Margaret Longley in the online version of the San Juan Journal.
And then there's this snarky piece from the Wall Street Journal: Heaven Sustain Us: Environmentalists Have Taken Over the Dorms, by Naomi Schaefer Riley. I must be getting old and grouchy, because I actually agree with some of the points she raises. The WSJ piece reminded me of What’s Wrong With “Social Justice”? by Tim Burke. Tim wasn't writing about COA (this was before he had visited), but he might have been.

Sichuan

2008-05-13T21:33:00.001-04:00

In the summer of 2005, Doreen and I traveled for a few weeks in Southwest China, including Sichuan, where there was a very large earthquake a few days ago. We spent most of our time on the Tibetean plateau in Qinghai, Gansu, and Northern Sichuan provinces. But toward the end of our trip we took a long bus ride from Northern Sichuan down to Chengdu, which is the capital of Sichuan and is in the central part of the province. This route took us right through the area near the epicenter of the earthquake.

I looked through the photos from the trip and found the picture shown above. I took this during the bus ride to Chengdu. There had been lots and lots of rain, and mud and rockslides closed the road at times leading to large delays. This picture was taken during one such delay, when almost everybody got out of their vehicles. In the distance along the road you can see some small wooden shacks. These were probably temporary housing for workers doing road construction.

The road, so far as I could tell, was the only even remotely major road heading north out of Chengdu. You can see from the picture that the road was built into a pretty steep hillside on which there had been considerable erosion. The road follows a river out of the mountains for most of its descent from the plateau. So it's easy to imagine all sorts of mudslides blocking the road, making it difficult to get resources from Chengdu north to the area that is hardest hit. There are also numerous tunnels through the mountains. Again, I could easily imagine that the tunnels were damaged in the earthquake.

Chengdu itself was a pretty nice city. It's huge--around ten million people--but it's surprisingly mellow for a city of this size. Doreen and I had a pleasant few days there. After a bunch of time on the road and some fairly primitive accomodations, it was nice to be at backpacker hotel with good showers and cold beer. We also saw many pandas at the zoo, which was very cool.

Anyway, the situation in Sichuan sounds horrible. There are lots of stuctures in China, especially outside of the cities, which appear to be rather poorly built. I'd guess that the cities and towns north of Chengdu suffered incredible damage.

Les Chats sans Frontiers

2008-05-12T23:04:00.001-04:00

The big news is that on Saturday we got two new kittens! A picture of them is above, and many more pictures can be found here. We got them from an SPCA in St. Stephen, New Brunswick, which is right across the border from Calais, Maine. The New Brunswick SPCA was the first one that had kittens available, so we made the drive. We picked the kittens out a few weeks ago, and I drove and got them Saturday after they were spayed/neutered.

So far they seem to be adjusting to their new home quite well. They seem quite at ease. They play, wrestle with each other, eat, and sleep. We haven't introduced Monster (our big, older cat) to them yet; the kittens have been confined to my office. But Monster can tell that there's something moving around in the office, and she seems surprisingly calm. So I think things bode well.

The shelter got an entire litter of kittens and gave them all names starting with "A". The little gray girl is called Apple, and I think we'll end up keeping that name. The orange guy was called "Archibald", which will definitely go. But so far I haven't come up with anything better than Orange Guy. Suggestions are welcome. But I don't think we'll call him simply "Orange." This seems too obvious.

Spring Flowers

2008-05-10T18:50:00.001-04:00

It's cold and grey today, but this was the scene yesterday in our backyard. Colorful finches continue to mob our birdfeeder, and the lawn needs mowing. Spring is here, even if I did just build a fire to take the chill off. I think I'll go exercise, and then make some dinner. I might have some tofu dogs that I bought earlier today. Doreen dislikes tofu dogs, but she's currently in Germany, so there's nobody to stop me from purchasing and eating tofu dogs and enjoying it.

Miscellaneous Thursday Observations

2008-05-08T20:23:00.003-04:00

Not motivated enough for actual paragraphs. So some bulleted items, instead:

Spring is definitely here. Trees and flowers are blooming, and the leaves are almost out. There are gold finches and house finches at our bird feeder, and I think I will need to mow the lawn this weekend.
The weather has alternated between beautiful, so that all I want to do is sit around and savor the warmth and the green, and cold and rainy, so all that I want to do is sit around because it's cold and rainy. So it hasn't been a record-setting week of productivity.
Tim Burke visited COA earlier this week. I've been a fan of his blog for a long time, and it was great to get to meet him in person. He gave a talk on Monday titled, "Long Tails, Network Hubs, Creative Destruction: How to make a Liberal Arts college in the 21st Century without trying (much)." His presentation was interesting and thought-provoking. Faculty and students found it to be a very accurate and illuminating view of the challenges and opportunities facing COA. Some of Tim's reflections on COA can be found in his current blog entry, generously titled Brains in Maine.
Conversations with Tim and others have highlighted for me some of the challenges and intellectual bottlenecks COA is experiencing at this particular moment in its history. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it is tiring sometimes. But at least we're not giving Phyllis Schlafly an honorary degree. Ug.

More Sky

2008-05-02T22:10:00.005-04:00

Here is another picture of a statue and the Parisian August sky. The statute is "Meditation avec Bras" by August Rodin.

(The main motivation for this post is to test using Picasa to post pictures directly to my blog. So far, it seems to working fairly well.)

More Greenness

2008-05-02T18:27:00.002-04:00

Looks like Forbes.com thinks COA is one of the ten greenest colleges and universities.

May Day

2008-05-01T09:34:00.004-04:00

Happy May Day!

Sky

2008-04-27T23:35:00.002-04:00

I did a bunch of organizing of digital pictures today and I came across the picture shown above. I took it last summer in Paris. I was there giving some lectures during the week, and on Saturday I spent a long day wandering around the city. It was slightly cool and the sky was fantastic. It was cold for the Parisians, but it was perfect for me. After a month in hot and polluted Beijing, an unusally cool Paris day was great. I took a lot of pictures of statues that day, trying to get more of the sky than the statue in the frame.

The sky today was kinda like it was that day in Paris. Although after that, the similarities end. No museums or cathedrals or great food today. But I did go for a run outside under the grey sky. The run was very slow, but still somewhat satisfying. I also planted some sweet peas, did laundry and dishes, and did some things around the yard. It rained a little this evening, and it was somewhat cool so I built a fire. Flowers are slowly blooming in our yard. It looks like spring is really here.