Heartcrossings

Needless Science

2009-07-09T04:20:00.002-04:00

Got to love it when shrink and science come together to restate the obvious. This study seems to suggest the higher up you are socio-economically, the less likely you are to engage with your fellow humans. The simple one-word equivalent for the bunch scientific gobbledygook in the article is probably snobbish.

Then there is this other one that has scientific proof that women are attracted to manly men. It does not qualify the term "manly" so one assumes that definitions could be subjective. At any rate, the value of a scientific study to prove such a thing is just as hard to fathom as needing to establish that wealth and arrogance often go together.

Surely, nature has not run of mysteries to be solved that can keep the scientific community gainfully engaged and also do the rest of us some good. Maybe that is asking for too much.

Usability Lesson

2009-07-08T04:54:00.002-04:00

Love this Swiss Army Knife style makeover of the kitchen knife. People often have kitchen drawers full of equipment to chop, cut, peel, pare and more and yet there is one knife that becomes the trusted favorite which gets used all the time - put to uses it was not even intended for. With a knife that is actually made to be multi-functional, we have design imitating and enabling the actual behavior of it's users. If this is not great usability, I don't know what is.That is concept and then there is reality-check. All of the commentators to this story say they would not like to use this knife because they fear it would injure them.

I find this idea and the reception to it most instructive because it translates to web usability as well. Copious amounts of time, effort and money is spent on usability by companies who want to do right by the users of their websites. Yet, when the site is made "right" to align with the perceived needs and preferences of the users, often the results are a complete disappointment to them. Maybe there is a gap between our desires and actions that simply cannot be measured and therefore never fully satisfied.

Information Ocean

2009-07-07T04:12:00.001-04:00

J often gets homework assignments that involves researching for information to write a report or complete a project. The topics are fairly straight forward being that the "researchers" are only 6-8 years old. I usually help her find the information from credible sources on the Internet and will check out some books from the local library if time permits.

Watching this video about the role of a school librarian in the 21st century gave me much food for thought. Specially when the librarian featured in it talks about growing up in an information desert whereas kids today are in an information ocean and drowning in it. Information fluency is as she points out is a crucial survival skill in the world that J and her peers are growing up in. It is just as if not more important than learning to read for these kids.

There is just too much information out there and not knowing to navigate successfully can determine whether they will sink or swim in this "ocean". A big take away for me from watching this is to start teaching J to find her way around search engines and be able to tell good information apart from the bad. You can't emphasize to kids soon enough that credibility is not conferred on a piece of information just because it showed up in Google search.The importance of this had not fully registered with me until hearing from a vanguard of library science and its use in elementary schools.

Teen Relationships

2009-07-06T04:02:00.003-04:00

Some years ago, after the book Rainbow Party was published, it fell to disgrace because the material was a little too sensationalist to lack credibility - at least in the opinion of its critics. Once again the issue of oral sex becoming commonplace for pre-teens and teens in America, is making news and a documentary. Until parents start to become ostriches with heads buried in the sands of denial, this story will likely do its rounds, get discussed and commented on.

Film-maker Sharlene Azam hits the nail on its head when she traces back the behavior of these pretty girls from affluent backgrounds who by their own admission have had wonderful childhoods. In short, there is no reason for them to engage in casual prostitution. She believes that many of them have been hurt and in love and do what they do to protect themselves from bing hurt again.

Azam said she thinks the "no strings attached" romances could be a defense mechanism against a greater disappointment.

"A lot of girls are disappointed in love," she said. "And I think they believe they can hook up the way guys do and not care.

"But unfortunately, they do care."

Claire Shipman advises parents to be constantly engaged in the lives of their children to prevent them from engaging in such activities. That and open communication, rules and boundaries says Shipman should do the trick. While she is right on the importance of all of the above, it would not be enough to deter a young girl who has been hurt and wounded deeply enough to consider doing whatever it takes to protect herself.

The answer may be in getting girls to value themselves very highly and recognize that there are many other accomplishments in life that are worth pursuing besides being in a relationship - specially one that expects sexual favors to sustain. Needless to say, positive and empowering female role models are very important in the lives of young girls.

A sense of purpose, a healthy self-esteem and a generous dash of ambition can act as effective deterrents against such reckless behavior. A girl who is driven to achieve and excel is less likely to need validation from a boy. She is likely to get a lot of male attention even without seeking it because she exudes so much charm and confidence. That would do enough to boost her confidence as a desirable woman. Her goal should not be to be the one who is most willing to offer sexual favors to have boyfriend, instead she be so far above the fray that she would never need to settle for anything short of a deeply loving and respectful relationship.

Playing To Win

2009-07-05T04:10:00.002-04:00

G is like my kid brother and is given to checking on me every once in a while. I wish he lived closer, so J could have a sense of extended family. His child is less than a year old and would fulfill J's strong desire to be someone's big sister.

He and his wife have tried to socialize with desis in their city (they have lived in several up to now) and have faced challenges not very unlike my own. I used to imagine that desis are very accepting of two parent families as they view this to be the normal family configuration. Apparently not.

G has lived in America since he came for grad school, worked almost every kind of odd job there is to help pay his bills as a student. He is not the lowest common denominator desi IT worker in that he has a wide variety of interests outside his day job and can carry on an intelligent conversation that has nothing to do with technology or immigration. He happens to be a Bengali who like me never lived in Kolkata. He would love to be part of something pan-Indian in America but that is not the easiest thing to find as he has come to realize.

The desi society here is fragmented in many different ways - FOBs, ABCDs, by region and language, by vintage (as defined by visa and citizenship status) and most importantly by net-worth. This is almost the modern day caste system only with different parameters to define the different stratas of the hierarchy. G says, the minute he encounters a desi, he can almost hear a the click of their mental calculator going on. He is asked the typical questions - Does he own or rent ? Which school district does he live in ? How far along is he in the immigration process ? Where did he go to school in India and America ? What does he do for a living ? Does his wife work ? What does he drive and so on.

By when he has completed the de regieur survey, the other desi has awarded him a composite score. This score would determine if he is in or out of their social circle. He could choose to be in and be treated with condescension if the desi in question rated him lower than themselves. Conversely he could have been rated higher than the other person in which case he would be treated like an interloper if he decided to butt into their circle.

The best outcome in this situation would be an equal score where he will be accepted without overt prejudice. But it gets tricky at this point. Every one is at the start line but desis don't just spend their life standing there smelling the roses. They dash off to reach their destinations and the race is brutally competitive. There is no aspect of life that is untouched by competition.

You either play the sport or step out to be a low caliber bench warmer who is unlikely to be called upon to play (this is exactly what I have chosen to do). G is not able to accept that option and yet he and his wife are simply not wired to thrive in hyper-competitive desi society. Being FOBs, they are not welcome in the "superior" ABCD circles. The locals if they are not overly prejudiced are polite but distant. They have their own lives and are not desperately seeking to befriend random FOBs that happen by.

G finds himself left with no good options. Like a man stranded on an alien planet he seeks signs of life - surely there are desis who think like him and his spouse. Surely they can find a community somewhere. He is not excited about raising a child in the isolation he and his wife find themselves in. While I am able to sympathize with him, I have no guidance to offer.

Saying Cheese

2009-07-04T04:09:00.001-04:00

The intensity of smile, school yearbooks photos and successful marriages are correlated according to a study. I specially like that yearbook pictures could be a good predictor of a person's marriage.

Overall, the results indicate that people who frown in photos are five times more likely to get a divorce than people who smile.

While the connection is striking, the researchers stress that they can't conclude anything about the cause of the correlation.

Being a single-parent without so much as a father-figure in J's life, I do worry about what perspectives she might form about the institution of marriage. She has no memory of a two-parent household - it has always been the two of us. If I do a half-way competent job of parenting and housekeeping, would J come to think of marriage as optional or nice to have when it is time for her to find a partner ? Yet, failing to do my job is not even an option.

My sense is she realizes that I have a lot of responsibilities to juggle, conflicting priorities to balance and lack the helping hand of a partner. Hopefully, she can imagine the kind of mother I might have been if I had the support I am missing. Maybe by doing a somewhat decent job as a mother, I might kindle in her the desire to give more to her children than I have been able to give her. Hopefully, in time she will see that as a natural by-product to a good, happy marriage and want it. At any rate, I am glad J almost always has a big smile on her face in her pictures - yearbook included. I want to believe it is an accurate predictor of her marriage.

Hand Movements

2009-07-03T04:52:00.001-04:00

According to this article in Scientific American hand gestures are correlated to our ability to understand and learn new concepts. The comments on the article make for interesting reading as well. In my culture, gesturing has never been a big part of communication. It would generally be viewed as distracting rather than helpful. I have noticed though that when giving discourses holy men and women do use hand gestures - they are few but highly eloquent. Likewise with artists, performers, musicians and dancers - gestures are part of their language.

At the other end of the spectrum, it is common to see socio-economically depressed people given to elaborate gestures involving hand and body to get their point across - and I say this in the context of Indian society. I would imagine some of the negative connotation associated with gesturing too much while talking stems from here. Folks probably don't want to come across as uncultured, uneducated or impoverished. If the findings reported in the article are correct, I wonder what that would mean for those of us who are culturally conditioned to gesture little or not at all.

Telling Too Much

2009-07-02T04:26:00.000-04:00

The phrase confessional journalism maybe relatively new but the genre is definitely familiar. Hadley Freeman describes its characteristics with remarkable accuracy :

Here's how it goes: a female journalist describes her obsession with her weight/breasts/ageing face/food or alcohol problems/inability to have a happy relationship. The article is illustrated by the journalist looking as miserable as possible. There are tales of daily woe. It concludes with the writer still sufficiently unhappy to be commissionable for another very similar piece.

While online and print media are replete with example of such outpourings - kvetching is certainly not the exclusive realm of women. Men will chronicle just as faithfully their many problems with women, alcohol, career (or the lack of one) among a host of other topics. That Freeman considers confessional journalism a serious setback to "feminism" is a testament to the fragility (if not irrelevance) of the movement itself.

Aside from everything else, this kind of journalism sets feminism back by about 50 years, because not only does it perpetuate offensive stereotypes about women as needy, helpless, childlike narcissists, it suggests that the most interesting thing a woman can offer up to others is her own battered, starved, bloated, enhanced or reduced body. And that seems a lot sadder to me than any shocking revelation I ever read in a single piece of confessional journalism.

Confessional writing is often the interesting thing a man or a woman can write. Take away the designation of "journalism" and describe it as an "essay" and there is no problem at all.

Friends With Benefits

2009-07-01T04:23:00.002-04:00

Friends with benefits is a relatively new concept in the annals of relationships and is getting to be fairly commonplace. In the on-line world, things are possibly much worse - there is no friendship involved in this type of short-term contact for sexual gratification. I find these ideas curious for several reasons and wonder what there might be in it for the woman.

Based on the sheer volume of literature and advice on the subject of how to find a man of your dreams, reel him in and get him to walk down the aisle, it seems like she is not getting a lot besides the "benefits" in the average relationship. When a man plays the field he is a player or a stud but a woman in similar circumstances is usually a slut. This is not to say any one characterization is better or worse that the other - but they are distinctly different.

If a woman is angling to catch a man and get married to him (and God forbid have his babies), she is way too needy and clingy but when a man turns his thoughts to marriage he is just a serious and sensitive guy that any woman should be overjoyed to have in her life. There are bridezillas but no equivalent term for grooms - apparently marriage still means a great deal more to women than it does to men. In short, this is not a gender-neutral issue.

If there is literature around how to find the woman of your dreams, more likely than not it is replete with wisdom on pick-up strategies that are most likely to succeed. In such books, a man will likely find advice on stalling techniques when being pursued by a woman determined to become his wife. At any rate, this whole friends with benefits business just makes things official so women can stop whining about their less than satisfactory state of affairs.

Is this then a way for her to avoid being hurt and betrayed by preempting the man's refusal to gratify her emotional needs. In calling a relationship "friendship with benefits" she is making sure that she has a friend past the expiration of the beneficial relationship - something that does not usually happen in the more traditional romantic involvement. A breakup is the end of both friendship and benefits at the same time.

This way she does not have to lose everything even after the man has moved on. For the man there is a huge advantage. Whereas he would at least be expected to provide some amount of emotional support in the relationship to enjoy the benefits, he is completely off the hook now. He gets everything he was getting before minus the obligation to be there for the woman emotionally. It is the best of both worlds as far as he is concerned.

It seems to me that women dig themselves into deeper and bigger holes as they go forth liberating themselves from the shackles of traditional gender stereotypes; in their misbegotten efforts at gender equality in relationships. Through their over-zealous efforts at parity with men, they end up ceding the real gains made by the gender over many generations in less "progressive" times.

Ironically (even if not directly related to the topic at hand), today's women are apparently unhappier than ever.The first step in achieving any form of "equality" might be to stop thinking about how to get a man and keep him. As long as that is even a premise, all talk of equality is moot.

Tracing Roots

2009-06-30T04:16:00.001-04:00

The idea of tracing back one's ancestors to 60,000 years ago is a fascinating one. This is a research in progress at National Geographic. To participate the first step involves purchasing a kit that allows the participant to send back a check swab for DNA analysis. Your anonymity is guaranteed. The success of the project clearly depends on the size and diversity of the database and it seems with a kit priced at $100 + that may be the biggest obstacle on the way to success.

In the exhaustive list of FAQs, I did not find one that asks how this project could be viable if the only way to get data were to be people willing and able to spend $100 to trace their ancestry. I would imagine there is large amounts of existing data - collected at low or no cost to the participant.

Now that it exists, this the monetization opportunity by appealing to the curiosity of the those who don't mind paying as much as they would need to in order to satiate it. This is a lot like paying for a seat on a space-craft though the price tags are orders of magnitude apart. It may not be too long before DIY DNA Analyzers become affordable enough for a lot of people - that combined with public databases could do make the business of ancestry tracing far more egalitarian and in the process more accurate.

Shouting Fire

2009-06-29T04:15:00.001-04:00

HBO's Shouting Fire is a collection of stories about Free Speech under attack in America held together by the narrative of Martin Garbus, the film-maker's father who is also a First Amendment attorney. One of the most powerful moments in the film comes when Garbus explains that the protecting people's freedom of speech requires protecting that of those who hate you and can potentially cause you harm. It drives home the point about true freedom being absolute rather than relative - the only kind of that is worth fighting for.

The stories come from across the political spectrum which proves that voices of dissent are not safe no matter what side of the ideological divide they come from. There is Lebanese-American Debbie Almontaser who is attacked because of a convoluted association some people found between her and an offensive tee shirt, a young man named Chase Harper who is suspended from his high school because he wore a tee shirt proclaiming homosexuality to be shameful.In both cases, the individual's right to free speech came under fire.

Liz Garbus presents each story in context of the time and surrounding circumstances which give the viewer a keen appreciation for what the average American is up against in today's world. Her father reminds us that the right to free speech cannot be taken for granted merely because it is guaranteed in the American constitution ; history has borne witness to many occasions where the right was temporary suspended ostensibly for the "greater good". He believes Americans must be prepared to fight every day for preserving this most fundamental of all rights.

A Poem By Eeva Kipli

2009-06-28T04:45:00.000-04:00

Read a beautiful, short poem by Finnish poet Eeva Kipli :

When sorrow fades
Come the memories,
And each of them
Hurts uniquely.

I wonder what comes at the cusp of fading sorrow and the rising swell of memories. I know I have felt strangely numb, it feels as if time is tied by a tourniquet. You seek respite and want it to loosen - for things to start flowing once more. Then after memories have been relieved in full-color, they recede too. Finally, there comes a time when there is room left behind by departed sorrow and memory - a place of stark emptiness that nothing seems to fill.

Talent And Effort

2009-06-27T04:14:00.002-04:00

If what I have seen within my own extended family is part of a broader trend, I would agree completely with the author of the book Talent Is Overrated. I have quite a few relatives with quirky, sometimes eccentric personalities and one or more serious talents. Almost all of them were too lazy or complacent to apply themselves, put the hard-work necessary to achieve anything remarkable from those natural gifts. Most if not all of them were openly disdainful of those of us who were not nearly as brilliant but persevered to achieve whatever it was we wanted to. It was as if hard-work was the exclusive domain of the dim-witted and we were wearing our badge of feeble-mindedness by being so hard-working.

As it turns out, the more "average" of the lot who put in the relentless hours of "deliberate practice" the author refers to, ended up faring better than the extremely talented. That said, I am big believer in the virtue of hard-work. While one cannot control the amount of innate talent one has (or does not have), effort is entirely in one's control and that should confer a feeling of empowerment, in my mind. One of the first things I taught J was the Thomas Edison quotation "Genius is one per-cent inspiration and ninety-nine per-cent perspiration". Needless to say, the hare and tortoise parable has been repeated a gazillion times in our household to ensure the lesson is well learned and never forgotten.

For The Kids

2009-06-26T04:08:00.000-04:00

Reading about this scientific study that proves that staying married for the sake of the kids does not always result in the desired outcome for the children, is vindication for parents who have decided to go solo. Several years ago when my marriage turned into this cesspool of anger, conflict and bitterness, leaving with J seemed like the best option. We have had more than our fair share of challenges as direct consequence of that decision but J has not lacked peace and quiet in the house.

In high conflict households, children go about their lives with a sense of rudderlessness. They have no one to take direction from or look up to, no one who is always emotionally available to address their problems. Some marriages take a lot of work to keep them viable - when spouses need to invest disproportionately into their relationship, their ability to attend to the needs of the children suffers. Single parent households have no such distractions and this often works out to the child's advantange.

I have long believed that using children to glue a bad marriage is the worst way to go about the job. Children are not supposed to and cannot mend the relationship between their parents. By placing them in a position where that is the desired effect, parents burden them with the most onerous kind of responsibility. Instead, they should take ownership of their problems and resolve it independently of their children. Sometimes, the only solution might be to end the marriage and that could be the best thing to do - specially for the sake of the kids.

Love Potion

2009-06-25T04:10:00.001-04:00

Interesting experiment on the science and chemistry of love - in which a man takes an MRI to check if and how he loves his wife. The author who becomes guinea pig for scientists working in the field, asks readers to consider some implications of this research :

If love is simply chemicals, doesn't that change its meaning? And how soon before we create a scientifically valid love potion? (Already under study, by the way.) What about a love vaccine to help us from falling for the wrong person? And if you have to rely on chemical enhancements, do you get an asterisk next to your name in the book of love, like Barry Bonds?

All of that sounds straight out of science fiction though it could not hurt to be inoculated against falling in love with the wrong person - what a lot of time, energy and emotions saved and spared that would be ! According to the article, the odds are already stacked against us by nature - In a cruel twist of bioengineering, the romantic craving actually gets more intense post-dumping.

Interesting Times

2009-06-24T04:14:00.002-04:00

Nice article on the the future of educational institutes as the hub of scientific research and technology innovation. The author points out :

While there are advanced capabilities that remain available only on campus, that boundary is rapidly receding.

This moment is akin to the turn of the last century, when philanthropists funded the spread of libraries to provide community access to the kinds of collections that had previously been available only to institutions and wealthy individuals. Fab labs are like libraries for a new kind of literacy, the reading and writing of objects rather than books. Instead of building a few big labs, it’s now possible to build a network of many more-accessible smaller labs that can be used for technical empowerment, training, incubation, and invention.

That is nothing short of fascinating. Today's children would probably have access to such labs by when they are adults. Besides the mind-boggling array possibilities that opens up for them, there is also unprecedented amount of choice and empowerment when it comes to education. One can easily imagine courses being tailored to exact individual needs and inclinations, students having the opportunity to create a curriculum for themselves that might require concurrent enrollment at several universities around the world for the best return on their investment of time and money. Instead of walking down the hallway from one lecture to the next, they may log in and out of university portals continents apart.

Love And Intellect

2009-06-23T04:46:00.001-04:00

Thanks to a power-outage, I had watched about a fourth of Hitchcock's Spellbound in my teens before the screen went dark. They were showing the movie on television. I had meant to check out the rest of it at some point and it happened a few weeks ago when I came upon a copy at the public library. It has been nearly that long since I read some of the writings of Freud. My general recollection of the experience is comparable to the kind that reading Kafka's Metamorphosis left in it's wake. Visceral but not particularly pleasant.

As much as I admire Kafka as a writer, I find it very hard to read his writing because of its profoundly depressing quality. I pretty much never returned to Freud after the initial encounter. One quote by the character of Dr Brulov, a psychoanalyst in Spellbound "We both know that the mind of a woman in love is operating on the lowest level of intellect" got my attention. I don't know how a man's brain operates when he is in love, but I know from personal experience and that of many other women of my acquaintance, that Brulov is exactly right about women.

I have been appalled (not to mention ashamed) at my ability to completely take leave of commonsense, rationality and reason - faculties that becomes painfully acute after falling out of love. Innately smart and sensible women will act in ways incomprehensible to their family and friends when they are hopelessly in love. Often their behavior at the time is totally incompatible with their personality. It is only after they emerge from that phase of the relationship, they begin to display their more familiar traits.

Book Scanning

2009-06-22T04:33:00.001-04:00

It's no big news that Google does some really cool stuff - be it getting goats to graze on their lawns instead of using a lawn-mower or rigging up some kind of infra-red contraption to scan books without opening them. While most of us may not be able to get goats to graze in our backyards, we would all find plenty of use for a portable camera book scanner.

First it was e-publishing and Kindle that was threatening the survival of the old fashioned book but with such a device, every customer browsing in a bookstore could mean lost revenue instead of a potential sale. Yet in every innovation that promises to be the death of the old way, there is often hidden opportunity waiting to be discovered and monetized. Inside a book-scanner there may be ways to generate buzz for goods and services relevant to text being scanned - and that is just the most obvious idea. It would only be a matter of time before much better ones came along.

An Outside View

2009-06-21T04:55:00.001-04:00

I have read way too much about Wendy Doniger to be read her books about Hinduism objectively. Up until reading this post in Marginal Revolution about the need to ask a non-Hindu about Hinduism, I was not particularly inclined to read anything by Doniger. Maybe there is something to be said of an outsider's view of a religion. While that view, may be completely unacceptable to the believers of the religion it could be helpful in other ways.

In an extreme oversimplification, if Doniger can be taken to represent the a certain culture and ethnicity, her views could serve as a proxy for their view of Hindus and Hinduism. Having this external cultural perspective on something as personal as religion can be instructive even if it is not agreeable. Instead we have a lot of earnest people who believe passionately about ensuring the facts present are right, and agonize over the accuracy of the interpretation.

If we could instead view the material as a creative writing and not assign to it any gravitas, we might get a lot more value out of it. I would almost equate it to an inoculation against the full-blown disease. Thanks to Tyler Cowen, Doniger is now on my reading list.

Happy Learning

2009-06-20T04:14:00.001-04:00

I am yet to be convinced of the benefits of video games for children unless they happen to be of the mind-calming variety ( I did not know that they even existed until hearing a story on NPR about the genre). There is enough stress and excitement in a modern day kid's day to need an additional surge by way of a fast paced on-screen game.

I'd much rather they expend the energy in a physical sport. If their minds need a work-out there are many time-tested ways to do that as well - strategy games, logic puzzles, creative DIY projects come to mind. Littlebits sounds like the happy medium between off-line and online world for learning while having fun. As the technology matures, it can only become more accessible and hopefully easy enough for young kids to work with.

Doing Free Right

2009-06-19T04:49:00.000-04:00

Recently while researching a technology solution for a client, I came across a vendor who touted their application as "commercial open source". That oxymoron (to my mind at least) had me stumped at first. After reading round a little, I realized that the chassis and the platform they had used to build their product was open-source but the solution they had developed using it was proprietary. So, all of the code would would not be freely available plus you would need to pay a licensing fee to use their product.

Compared to the purely commercial applications in the same space, their pricing was attractive but there was not a great deal of track-record to go by either. With the rising number of offerings in the open-source arena, anyone with a good idea and the perseverance to bring it to fruition can do so at little to no cost and that sounds wonderful in theory. While many are attempting to do just this not every enterprise hits pay dirt. This article in Techdirt titled Free Gone Wrong..Or Free Done Wrong may have an answer to why that may be the case.

Doodle Bar

2009-06-18T04:16:00.000-04:00

The idea of a doodle bar is both simple and clever as the best ideas often are. This would be heaven to those prone to doodling and might introduce its joys even to those who are not. Per one of the creators of the concept, Serge Seidlitz "The aim is to make The DoodleBar into a walk-in, constantly evolving work of art, created as a collaboration between all those who visit,"

The idea of a collaborative art projects is not new - SITO has been around for years. Then there are sites like Haiku For You that take an idea submitted by a visitor and turn it into an illustrated Haiku. A more controlled art experiment with twelve artists working together on a themed quilt can result is some beautiful creations.

Doodle Bar is almost a throwback to a time when the walls of a cave served as a canvas to chronicle events of life big and small - in that it is a little different from other contemporary collaborative art projects.

Intangible Possessions

2009-06-17T04:35:00.001-04:00

A friend was asking me a few days ago what I do for backing up my digital pictures. He is considering a couple of commercial service providers who will back up images with multiple redundancy. Obviously, pictures equal memories and are incredibly valuable. My friend has a toddler so the picture-taking is non-stop. I know having been through that phase with J.

I don't do anything for backup I said and he expressed both surprise and concern at that. The pictures I like very much, I print and put in a physical album. The rest are all over the place. I don't find myself feeling attached to digital images. They are special only when they tangible. Obviously, there is a limit to how much I can turn "tangible" or would even consider worthwhile to do so. This essay on the the transient nature of digital collections in The Morning News deals with just this idea. The author says :

Old formats ooze historical significance; new ones are deleted with a tap.

Just that makes digital media rather difficult to get attached to. Besides everything that is digital is probably recoverable as well - specially if you did not produce it yourself. You can just plug in to the universal repository of media via the web and all at once you can have everything you lost back again. Sure some things are easier to find than others but with some persistence and patience an accidentally wiped out music collection such even as esoteric as the author's can be rebuilt.

It makes sense then that I have notebooks, cards and letters from twenty years ago to this day but have very little by way for digital memories. The time-stamp on an email even ten years old never triggers that rush of nostalgia that the date on an hand-written letter can.

Baby Strollers

2009-06-16T04:30:00.001-04:00

J's days on the stroller ended a while ago but I still remember the first time I put her on one. She'd start to cry almost immediately because the stroller faced away from me. I would need to step in front and show her I was around for her to stop. In a few months she grew more comfortable but there was still some residual anxiety. I would peer down at her from the the window on the canopy, she would smile a little, gesture excitedly and want me to carry her.

As soon as I felt comfortable, I stopped using the stroller and carried her in a backpack slung in front of me. She would fall asleep in minutes. It was a remarkable change in behavior and so it is easy for me to believe this study that suggests children can feel emotionally impoverished if they are placed in strollers that face away from the mother. It made a huge difference for me as well to have her sleeping and close to me - maybe there is an element of emotional impoverishment for the mother too.

Boys Left Behind

2009-06-15T04:50:00.001-04:00

While the author does not explain why the current education system is not serving boys well (if at all), the numbers she presents are concerning. She argues that No Child Left Behind equals All Boys Left Behind. This WSJ article on the same topic has some insights into why this may be happening :

The lifestyles and habits that worked so well for men in more dangerous times may not be working so well for them in the information age. In every age from the caves right on through the second World War, it worked for men to take big risks, have short attention spans and be driven by ego. These days, those things are more likely to get in the way of doing a good job. Hunting wild boar and hunting through Wikipedia require a different set of skills.

That makes a great deal of sense in a workplace situation and can possibly be tied to a the process of learning even at the grade school level. Taking big-risks, short attention spans and being driven by ego don't seem to be the most valuable characteristics for success there either. The challenge for educators and parents must then be how to instruct boys in a way that is compatible with their natural traits in a world that appears not have much use for them.