#uncoffeed...

My book club is wrapping up   Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid in November.  We enjoy our digressions so much that they leak over into emails between meetings. Barney Sperlin sent us Mathcircler Dr.  Alon Amit 's  excerpt from a discussion on Quora :   Math is not something boys are better at, it's not a spectator sport, it's not a system of arbitrary rules...it's not easier or better in base 12 or base π, it's not a young person's game, it's not useless in the real world, it's not beholden to the real world, it's not learnable in one year or from one book or one website... it's not beyond your grasp if you recognize that it will take time and dedication and active effort... From  Keith Ramsay, Pee-Haich-Dee in mathematics :    Mathematics is not just the most stable part of our favorite theories of the world. Replace "math is" with "I am."   You see anything useful in there? I do. I also found in...

I was up shiny at 6:00 AM today.  I'm going to try to make this a habit - wish me strength because luck's got nothing to do with it.  I need to change the state of play and garner more useful results for my efforts. I say all the time that I'm allergic to waiting: it makes me itchy.  The submission process for publication is very itchy.  I try to mitigate by submitting on a somewhat regular basis so that I get some return in a steady flow.  It doesn't always work well; besides that I have to actually send something, there are many factors that affect the response time from prospective publishers.  Scratch.  I do love my rejection letters, but they are so long in coming.  Scratch, scratch. I have Delayed Gratification Challenges.  I am learning to measure time week to week instead of minute to minute, but it isn't easy for me.  As it relates to human connection the concept becomes infinitely more complicated. Just like with publi...

When my teenage daughter Alia was living with Katie's aunt, she was asked to mind adorable 4-year-old Katie for an afternoon. "Katie doesn't like bread crust," Alia was warned. "You'll need to cut it off her sandwich or she won't eat."  Things that seem trivial to adults are terribly important when you're 4. (The 4-year-olds probably have the best perspective, but that's a different blog post .) "Okay," teenage Alia said, and then she didn't do it. I don't need to explain this. You will probably guess that K ate the sandwich with nary a peep. You would be correct. Alia explained to Auntie that the sandwich was eaten, crust and all. Auntie was amazed. K just smiled with her sweet little face. The next time Auntie made a sandwich with crust on it, K refused to eat. There's probably a legitimate psychological term for the way people never forget where your buttons are once they learn how to push them. This is w...

Part of Adulting, New Age Model, is self-care. It's a huge part, intersecting with all other directives. Put On Your Own Oxygen Mask First. This can be confusing. I was taught to be mindful of others: how would I feel if someone said that thing to me? I became very introspective. How would I actually feel? Taking the time to calculate scenarios may have made me somewhat prescient and somewhat slow. It also left me in a void when I learned, by trial and error, that not all persons were making the same calculations. In fact, there is a whole subset of humans who rate interactions on how well you consider their needs. You know; you've dated some of them. You end up doing double duty, caring for yourself and them, or just caring for them. It is daunting to understand HOW to take care of yourself the way you take care of others. It isn't wrong to think how our actions will make other people feel. It's an important lesson because it mitigates our natural solipsistic te...

YEAH, no, I shot myself in the foot on this one because I don't like feely-movies. I was hoping, naively, for more focus on the the discussion of art's impact on society, but really I should have known better. It is sad how judg(e)mental I can remain watching these two strangers enact a very realistic fake marriage of 15 years .  A lot of the time I am siding with the guy: if the wine is bad, you say something. I had to stop watching, though, to comment on a pivotal point in the "marriage" - the pretending wife is complaining that her pretend husband doesn't see her, because he didn't notice she changed her lipstick nor her earrings.  On this I disagree, and I have to credit my ex-husband. Yardy rarely cared if I wore makeup or not. I clean up well, as they say. I often call makeup "battle armor", and it's important when how I present to society is important. It's important when I'm feeling especially unwell and ho...

the truth of the matter a woman knows knows before she knows hence the fearsome sense the truth of the matter i would were it not for matters of logic and exposition be able to answer more clearly the question.

Addiction is a real problem in our country - Drama Addiction. Facebook, media, entertainment, even our government are all drama-fed.  Like any addictive thing - pizza, drugs, lovers, political scandal - we feel the absence when we aren't surrounded by it.  And we go looking for it.  Looking for something because you are desperately craving it will inevitably lead to trouble.  You already know this is true, and now I'm calling you out.  The stats on my blog show you like Drama Addiction better than you like Diet or Psychology. So. Collectively, we're being sucked down the drain of drama, and taking our nation with us. We live in a reality TV show. Drama's insidious, though; it sneaks in under the guise of love and friendship.  It starts by listening to someone's problems.  There's a level of vanity involved when you offer advice.  Usually there is mutual feel-good, and the next time one of you has problems, you'll get together again....