ajawa_took

    On weekly homeworks in upper-division courses, I always ask students to "ask an interesting question and try to answer it." After initial confusion, this usually works quite well, making the better students stop and think about what they are learning. The first few times, some people invariably think it's a joke and react accordingly. However, I don't usually get the following response: "I wonder if you are married? I don't think think so, but I bet you have a boyfriend because you're too pretty to be single." So this got me thinking.

    My first reaction was knee-jerk feminist: why do women always have to put up with such crap, and what am I to wear if I want colleagues to see me as at least professional and pleasant, but I don't want such comments?!? Then I thought back to my visits to rateyourproffessor.com, or whatever that website is called, and remembered that, in fact, men get exactly the same kind of crap. Then I asked myself, why does this particularly bother me? And whether and why would it bother other women? And if it does uniformly bother women, does it also bother men? So now I am curious enough to try and gather evidence:
  Have you ever had students make comments to you about your attractiveness?
  Did/Would that bother you? Why or why not?
 

but no.
 i briefly considered getting out of bed, and getting the hell out of my brick building deathtrap, and then went back to sleep.

Current Location: not califonia!
Current Mood: WTF?

Happy birthday to me!
And to all born today!
Happy birthday, Ajawa!
Happy birthday to me!

  I shall soon be back home in Chicago, thewhich home is currently cold and rather messy.  I should get me a sleep schedule - anybody know where to get one?  Three papers I should be writing are mocking me.  The left half of my laptop's screen is darker; an optimist might say that the right half is brighter; but the realist says, my eyes hurt.  Maybe I should spend less time staring at laptop screen. Lack of internet at home might help.

Current Location: parentland
Current Mood: meditative

  just passing along a lovely youtube link from fclbrokle. 
  amusing, and might be saying something interesting about diffferent notions of "hero".
 

 last couple weeks have been a bit crazy.
 am slowly regaining sanity in parentland.
 wet and warm weather is awesome, and utterly uncalifornian.

Much gratitude to:

•  Ahuva, who drove me all around Chicago.
•  ATA for the $50 upgrade to business class and 4 hours of comfortable sleep.
•  Crystal&Dima, for movie-showing and concrete-block-carrying.
•  Gakk, for swift decisive packing advice.
• migolorin, who helped me say good bye to the bay area, and played me pretty music.
•  Lynn, for gelato and truffles.
•  Nameless Neighbor who provided wifi.
•  Nameless Oakland USPS Worker, who patiently processed 16 big heavy improperly adressed boxes.
• quale, who helped me stay sane through the packing process.
•  Strange People who carried away everything, including the horrid kitchen chairs.
•  Tom, who timed his party so that i might be able to come.
•  UIC, for paying for shipping.
•   calmathgeek, who saved my departure day with driving and shipping and craigslisting and carrying furniture.

•  USPS, for moronic regulations forbidding visible liquor labels on shipping boxes.
•  LOT airline, for moronic policy requiring paper tickets and, in certain cases, in-person pick-up thereof.
•  AmericanAirlines, for delayed flights and dead power outlets in terminal.
•  Chicago/O'Hare, for non-free wifi.
•  Clausen House Thrift Shop, for broken promise to pick up stuff.
•  LJ, for stealing my time.
•  Accursed USPS, may it ever rot in cardboard&tape shipping hell, for lying to me and keeping me from saying a proper good-bye to berkeley model-theorists.

Current Location: Parentland
Current Mood: sleeepy
Current Music: birds&raindrops

  to quote my mother, "Getting a Ph.D. isn't like getting married, nor even like buying a house: it only happens once in your life!"
  which in itself is not the right measure of importance, or else every moment would be equally important, which may be true, but isn't what my mother meant.
  nevertheless, it feels like a significant event, which is not the same as "a significant accomplishemt", which it hardly is. more of a "distance traveled" mile post than of a "height attained" elevation marker.

  i'm leaving california for good in less than two weeks. for once, i'm looking forward to new places instead of feeling overwhelmingly sad about leaviing.

Current Mood: sleeepy
Current Music: highway&BART

(>> is me; > is Eliza.)

-----------------------------------------
>> Hello.
> How do you do.  Please state your problem.
>> do i want to go to bogota?
> What would it mean to you if you got to go to bogota  ?
>> i'd get to play with people i like, and see mountains
> You say i'd get to play with people you like  ?
>> no, i'd get to play with people i like, not you'd get to play with them! can't you recognize contractions?
> Are you saying no just to be negative?
>> no
> You are being a bit negative.
>> no
> Why not ?
--------------------------------------

Current Mood: perplexed.

  my computer can survive in the wild for a whole two hours now that it has a new battery!
 (this is a big improvement on the previous, nearly dead, full-to-flat-in-15-minutes version.)

now if only warm weather holds, and lazyness doesn't get in the way, i shall sit under trees with math.

Current Mood: fidgety

ridiculousness, stolen from goodrick

   I almost got to emeryville marina today, landed on a seaweedy beach in emeryville, and didn't have to swim! Not swimming is a first; swimming while landing doesn't count.
   One leg out of kayak is no better than whole body out of kayak: getting other leg in tips kayak. Straddling kayak, then pulling in two legs simultaneously works better.  Water in the Bay is surprisingly warm and clear.
   Pacific ocean really likes sunglasses, stole another pair from me today. Note to self: tie them on! Luckily, my perscription glasses survived.
   I can just barely paddle against a 17-knot wind, if there are no waves. With waves, my lower body has to make sure i don't end up swimming, and my upper body doesn't have enough strength. Note to self: approaching CalAdventure's dock in the afternoon when a strong breeze blows landwards, give up going west until really really close to land.
  

 Kayaing on Tahoe is much easier and more peaceful.

it's nice to know that evans can sway back and forth a few times without falling.

Spoon-wielding Mexican women besiege TV studio

and i hope this one stays funny for another couple weeks.

Current Mood: apprehensive

 expresso and bagel for breakfast;
 tea and a few donut holes for lunch;
a lot of half-ripe blackberries for dinner.

  why, in all disputes about israel, on both sides, is there so much talk of photogenically dead babies, and no talk of why terrorist organizations work and how to stop them?
  of course, it's easy to scream "Those monsters are killing children! Stop the monsters by any means necessary!", and it's hard to understand a complicated situation and judge wisely. i make no claim to understanding.
  but is it not obvious that shouting slogans is strictly counterproductive?
  what might be excusable as an emotional response of people deeply involved in the situation, is not excusable as a program of action of faraway people who have no personal connections to lebanese, jewish, of sudanese children.
  i am equally disgusted by american anti-israeli protesters and russian pro-israeli bloggers.

  all i hear is:

 we kill their civilians because they are all brain-washed fanatics; even those who don't murder us feed, clothe, and shelter terrorists who do.
 they kill our civilians because we are all trained soldiers, or active supporters thereof.

our army is better funded, so they would lose a conventional war, so they have no choice but to resort to isolated attacks against civilians.
their army is hiding among civilians, so we have no choice but to resort to bombing civilians.

the status quo is unacceptable to us and not getting better, so we must do something about it.
the status quo is unacceptable to them and not getting better, so they must do something about it.
they are murdering our women and children.
we are murdering their women and children.

they all hate us.
we all hate them.

all we want is to get our prisoners back (who would then fight them).
all they want is to get their prisoners back (who would then fight us).

all we want is to live in peace on our lands, not fearing terrorist attacks.
all they want is to live in peace on their lands, not fearing hostile israeli military and police and settlers.


 of course, to me there is an obvious "we" in this conflict: i have many close friends on one side and none on the other.
 of course, my emotional reaction is to wish israel well.
 but can i claim that  invading lebanon is the best way to deal with the terrorist threat? can i even claim that it will diminish that threat? no, i don't know enough.
 how can i assert that the rewards of this conflict will be worth the combined suffering of everyone involved, if i cannot judge what rewards there might be, if any?

 and if all we're doing is cheering our friends in a no-holds-barred fight, than maybe we should stop moralizing and just say

                                 GO ISRAEL!!!

Enough grumbling! there was plenty happy in Alaska:

• goldpanning in Ressurection Creek in the town of Hope (where gold was first found in Alaska)
• tiny trail through flowering (humph!) blueberries, up past some waterfalls to a sunny powerlines glade
• puffins! and floating stones and bits of very blue ice
• Byron glacier
• roadside picnic where Denali Highway crosses a nameless creek: yay mosquito nets!
• math in a tavern of an old goldmining camp, by the side of the Steese Highway
• manycolour stones in half-snow-covered creek
• marmots eat bedrolls for breakfast!
• math at the bar of an italian restaurant closed between lunch and dinner
• locals/natives haggling over a bearclaw necklace

Current Mood: lazy

  after insisting for years that he is not competent to make the judgement, he suddenly pronounces me sane, and, to add injury to insult, keeps me away from the bouncy castle! humph.
 i'm sure he was just trying to save me from his daughter's enthusiasm...

Current Mood: bouncy!

the day is warm and sunny, full of clock-ticking and construction and airplanes. the north-facing office is pleasantly cool.
it is now two o'clock. the animals are playing dice on the map of afganistan. Tea-Gra rolls between barsat and gupis, and considers. Stuffed Cardinal Rat is leaning over the dice, riveted to the game, open-mouthed. Dreamy lies on his tummy and stares into the space that dice happen to occupy.
i should eat something before meeting with my advisor.

Current Mood: summery mathy

if i don't feed my phone, it falls asleep, and i can't take pictures of a shiny swingy suspension bridge straight out of indiana jones movies, except only a few feet high in woody flatlands. trails shorter than 5 miles end surprizingly quickly if one is more used to 10-15 mile days. after miserable montreal weather, real summer is very nice. hopefully, more of that awaits me in boston; and hopefully i can get all the carful berkeley people to take me to trees this summer.

despite evidence to the contrary in form of lack of lj entries. rectifying that, a bunch of short updates:

Madison was wet and wonderful two weeks ago: cold windy rain was good contrast to current berkeley weather; silence at night is disconcerting when one is used to a freeway; i hung out with an israely friend from cambridge who makes french coffee but awesome hot fresh-roasted almonds; many recursion-theory talks, a few interesting model-theory talks, and maybe people even liked my talk.

Next week i flee again, this time for a conference in montreal, and some parents in boston, and one friend driving me to durham to see another friend. Yumm! Now i just need to polish (and shorten!) the talk, and dellamify preprint, and finish grading endless homeworks.

How to brown an Ajawa: preheat day until clouds clear; bake at noon, 30 minutes on each side.

Current Mood: синее небо, белый самолет