Happy New Year

You may wonder what kind of weirdo calendar I'm following. Or, indeed, what I did with myself for several months.
The answer to the first question is that I always feel September first as the beginning of a new year. A vaste expanse of months, and weeks, and days, and minutes, in which I can try and experiment with something new, something better. This year I'm particularly energetic due to extremely long vacations (I will not tell you how long, lest you commit the sin of Envy).
The answer to the second is that I had very long vacations, and got to spend a lot of time with my children. This has led me to seriously reconsider my work strategy. I am now planning to reorganize so as to become more efficient and have more time for my kids. And for my husband. And for my students.
And, first and foremost, for myself. Happy New Year, everybody!

Mothers' choices

A lot has been said about the decision by Rachida Dati (french minister for justice) to go back to work five days after giving birth to her newborn. Most of what has been said was negative: concern over mother's and baby's wellbeing and bonding, lack (or reduction) of breastfeeding, and fear of backlash on all mothers who choose a more usual timetable.

Let me start by saying that my country has a compulsory maternity leave of several months - i.e., you can't go back to work, even if you want to, and you get full (or next to full) pay. I think this is a sound policy, but this is not what I want to discuss now.

A minister is not just "a woman doing a job". She is a person who has chosen a very special, very demanding career; like all such people, she chose it with her eyes open, and took into account that this might lead to some disruption in her family life - if she ever had a family. Nobody beats an eyelash if a politician moves to a different town and sees their children only occasionally, even for years.
Rachida Dati has chosen to go back to work, knowing that she is missing something; at the same time, she knows that her baby will be well taken care of (France has a solid culture of nannies, and I imagine that a minister can choose the best). If she chose not to breastfeed, or to supplement with formula, again it's her choice; it has some drawbacks, but most kids thrive just as well on formula.

And I don't understand the anger about her looking well; some women stay overweight after pregnancy, but not all do. I expect she chose to wear some kind of corset; it's not unhealthy, at most uncomfortable (and some women having had a c-section tell me it can actually help). Her shoes look indeed very uncomfortable, and possibly unhealthy, but in our culture nobody criticizes women for their stiletto heels.

Summing up, she's a woman whose choices are very different from mine, but they are imho reasonable and consistent choices, worthy of mine and everybody else's respect. I would like to live in a world were such either/or choices wouldn't be necessary, but pending a revolution, I'd rather blame the patriarchy than the women who have to deal with it. And Dati has shown ample ability to beat the odds against her.

On the republican VP candidate

It's kind of weird to think that on the tickets in the US there's a man the age of my husband, and a woman (almost) my age. It's even more impressive to think that she has managed to pursue a demanding career while giving birth to five children, the youngest born April 2008. The youngest also has Down Syndrome.
Apparently, Palin declared herself surprised since "her other pregnancies went so well". On the other hand, she's pro-life, so she decided to continue the pregnancy, after discussing with her husband.
Everybody is saying how nice this is, to see somebody who really believes in what she says (Palin is very strongly pro-life).
Somehow, I'm not so impressed. Palin went back to work three days after the child was born. It seems evident that, whoever has to spend hours and hours bringing this baby to the doctor, to the logopedist, to the physical therapist, etcetera, it will not be Ms Palin. So what will she do? Maybe nurse him. Spend some "quality time" with him. I mean, whatever time she can spare for her already existing children - the eldest is going to Iraq in September, but the other 3 still at home.
So let's recap. This woman chose to have a child at an age where she knew that Down Syndrome had a very high likelyhood. She knew that she was well to do enough that she wouldn't have to give up her job, and her life, and her husband, and her other children, to take care of the newborn however sick he was. So she made the same decision I made, when I decided not to test my feti for genetic anomalies. I knew that it wouldn't be the end of my life, either (although I'm sure glad that mine are so far healthy).
I fail to see how this example has any relevance to the many, many women who choose to abort a handicapped fetus. Or who choose an abortion for a million different reasons, most of which Ms Palin has no experience of.
Still, if she's the choice, maybe the Republican will stop saying that Obama is unexperienced? McCain is 72 and a cancer survivor; the chances that his VP will be promoted President are definitely significant.

I should have spent the day on the beach

Today the weather was gorgeous. Sunny, dry, with just a few white clouds to make the sky prettier.
And I feel I wasted it. I barely managed to prepare my lecture (because of discussions with students), gave my lectures, talked with students/postdocs/colleagues the whole afternoon. And now I am too tired to do anything useful.
Luckily the weekend is on its way.

Intense week

I didn't do any research this week. I spent several hours doing support to the students. I should be happy that they are getting productive, but this means a growing pile of mostly badly written and occasionally wrong theorems accumulating on my desk.
I wasted an outrageous amount of time doing university politics. I may or may not have an official administrative duty in the future (I hope not), but I will have to invest a lot of time doing brown-nosing, which is the officially certified method to get poitions in one's own field in my university. It is very sad, but I'd rather submit to the indegnity that have my student suffer from me being overworked; plus, one deserving young person will get a good job, if I play my cards right. Still, part of me hopes to move eventually to a better and more honest place, if one exists.
I dedicated some time to maternal activities: I went to a meeting with the schoolteachers, planned a birthday party, and (drumroll) finished sorting and packing the enormous backlog of no longer needed clothes in our flat. Plus, I managed a trip to Ikea and bought a large amount of no frills storage funiture; when it will be delivered (by Ikea) and mounted (by WS, with some paid assistance) I expect a much neater household. I already reorganized C#1's clothes cupboard, and the twins' is due tomorrow. Mine will have to wait for a new, unbroken cupboard. I am still overdue in organizing the children's extracurricular activities: C#1 wants to try a new sport, for which she needs a medical certificate, C#3 will do violin, or swimming, or both, and C#2 will most likely sit on a chair and suck his index finger.
Next week I'm off to a conference, and after that courses start. I am wondering when I'll start to do research again, and hoping that it won't be too long.

Growing old and liking it

As their hair slowly turns grey, or red as the case may be, most women encounter a series of physical changes. However, many of them, my own mother among them, maintain a fully feminine body despite the advancing years; others, like my children's nanny, surpass their own already considerable achievements in matters of softness of the chest area.
It is pleasant to know that I am not alone in belonging to neither of these categories.

Alternatives

In the past two days I spent a nontrivial part of my time and most of my energy discussing hiring policies in our insitution with a number of people, including all the colleagues in my research group and the head of the whole institute. The result is that important information has not been forwarded, and other has been "lost". As a result, a position which we had planned on advertising soon also got "lost", and someone who is in his late forties, married and with a child on the way might or might not be given the tenure track position that was informally promised to him years ago. The same position that prevented him from getting an offer anywehere else "because we know you're going to be hired at XXX".
In particular, I am faced with the following two alternatives:
1) ether the head of the institution, or the head of my research group
is
2) either a liar or imbecile.
I am trying to decide which alternative I like less. Or more.

As a side remark, the head of the institution said several times that I am "cute" and referred to me by a diminutive form of my first name (say Venny instead of Estraven) which in our language would only be appropriate for a child.

I got too many invitations to conferences. When am I ever going to write a paper again?

The usual double standards

Newspapers everywhere have been full of sadness and lament over the death of Luciano Pavarotti. The world-famous tenor, who died at 72 of cancer, is survived by his three grownup daughters from the first marriage and his 4-year old daughter from the second marriage. A twin brother of the latter died in childbirth.
I am of course sorry for any loss, and the fact that I cannot tell the difference between a good and a bad singer doesn't prevent me to realize that he had exceptional gifts; he was also, as far as one can tell from the outside, a generous person who tried to raise money for the less fortunate.
But I can't help noticing that nobody is interviewing philosophers or priests as to the morality of having a child when you're 68, just as nobody started discussing whether the death of the twin was related to receiving a 68-year old's faulty gametes.
I wish I could say that he gets special treatment because he was such a great artist. But I am concerned that he only gets it because he's a man. The same newspapers and magazines were full of contempt for a woman who had twins in her sixties not long ago.
Addendum: In fact, despit the catholic doctrine not admitting divorce (and therefore not recognizing second marriages), Pavarotti is going to have a church funeral.

How much housework should children do?

I just read an article on the Guardian about a topic I have recently given a lots of thought to: children and housework. As a totally spoilt only child, I never did much. I helped preparing the table (at 7-8), filling and emptying the dishwasher (at 10-12), and keeping my stuff in order whenever I was yelled at.
I didn't make my bed since my grandmother found I couldn't do it right anyway. I never cooked anything or used the washing machine; only halfway through my teenager years I discovered how the vacuum cleaner works.
As a result, or maybe not, I am a total slob. My dream is to live in a room-and-board situation when someone else cooks for me, washes, irons and folds my clothes, and cleans up my room. Funnily enough, this is precisely how I lived in my years as a student, and I loved it.
So I feel kind of awkward asking my children to do anything. Still, I think I will soon start having C#1 prepare the table and put the dishes in the dishwasher, maybe introducing symultaneously a weekly pay. That's what my parents did: the money I received was supposed to be payment for my household work. Is 7 old enough? Should I wait until she turns 8?
As for C#2 and C#3, I have started yelling at them to put away their toys, with as good as no success. I am also meditating a "from now on you wipe your own ass" official declaration when they turn 5, but maybe I should wait a bit longer. I'm just so fed up with it.
Anybody has thoughts or suggestions on this? WS is not able to give competent advice, since he never helped much in the house either, and his mother is the only woman I know who's even more of a slob than I am (thankfully, or he would find it very hard to live with me).

Elegance and science

When I think of the word elegant in a scientific context, it is usually in the sense of "The Elegant Universe", although of course I think that mathematics is way more elegant than physics will ever be :-). However, occasionally one has to consider that elegant for a human being usually means well dressed.
The only time I saw Lisa Randall, that is what impressed me most: that she is carefully
dressed in a way that most scientists (female and not) aren't. Well, that and the fact that her handwritten slides where so hard to read: I can't deal with makeup but at least my handwriting is more elegant than hers. Unfortunately I also didn't understand her talk, but that was entirely due to my lack of an appropriate background.
I don't find it bad that Tommaso Dorigo commented on her looks: she obviously gives this issue a lot of care. I did go back and read previous reports of talks by Dorigo: he never seems to refer to the looks of the speaker, male or female, but in the case of Randall he made an exception, because the looks are really striking in this case.
As Tony Smith pointed out in the comments to a later post by Dorigo, she even made an appearance on Vogue: taken in context, her statement seems actually very reasonable, and not sexist at all.
This said, I don't think that people who criticized Dorigo for including a comment on Randall's looks and her attractiveness were totally unjustified. It also seems to me no coincidence that negative remarks came both from female and minority physicists. Unfortunately there are too many physicists who do not treat men and women on equal grounds (have a long read at FSP if you have doubts about it), and therefore even reasonable people have to watch their language.
I also don't agree at all with Dorigo in the third point of his subsequent explanatory post: politely requesting pc language (not imposing it, mind you) is a reasonable thing to do. When your words are wrong, your thoughts can easily go wrong, too. In the US, eliminating the word negro from polite conversation hasn't eliminated racism. But I still view it as a progress.

Family work in a man's words

Via Salon, I found this lovely article on the New York Times. It's about a work-from-home dad who complains about how much timewaste a family actually is: in particular, how much times goes wasted in small daily emergencies. Nothing new there for me, now.
I occasionally wished I had known about this before the children were started. Maybe I would have reconsidered WS's suggestion that being an only child could have positive sides. I will try to remember this next time I compare my publication list with that of scientists with spouses who take care of all this extra work.
I actually do a bit more of my fair share, but then WS does more of the routine tasks because he hates the emergencies even more than I do. I am also ashamed to say that reading the article made me think "How long have the children gone without seeing a pediatrician?".

Love thy colleague

I was very surprised when, a few days ago, I read in a comment by Count Iblis on Am I A Woman Scientist?'s blog that he manages to write papers with people he has never met. Since I have done plenty of collaboration with people who were physically far away, I stopped, and asked myself why I found it so strange.
The answer is, of course, that all my co-authors have been friends; indeed, we were friends or at least good acquaintances even before we became co-authors. Indeed, the relationship goes both ways: I have expanded my research field in certain direction, in order to read papers by people I found interesting, or even so that we could collaborate. On the other hand, I have become a close friend of researchers I started talking to because of pure scientific interest.
Indeed, more is true: I tend to think of the mathematicians in my field, those that I have known now for one or two decades and that I occasionally meet somewhere in the world, those that I invite to my conferences and whose papers I referee (and conversely), as my "village". That is, the place where I am at home; where people know me and accept me as I am, including plenty of problems (when I read of people complaining about slacker co-authors... well, that's usually my role).
Although I still keep contact with some of my pre-university friends, they are not so many, and the contact is infrequent. The friends I've kept for three decades now are those who at least try to understand why it is reasonable that I occasionally leave husband and children behind and travel to another town, or country, or continent, to try and prove theorems.
My social network in the town were I live tends to be composed of other parents with a university culture and a taste for books. Some are scientists in other fields, others are married to scientists, and all have some kind of curiosity or at least respect for the world of science; they are my models in my attempts to do public outreach (attempts that include this blog, of course).
So there's one part of balancing work and love, the brain and the heart, that I find very easy: namely, a lot of the people involved are the same.

This post is written for scientiae-carnival, whose next edition is Aug 1st at Twicetenured.

Brief rants

I'm in a tremendous hurry, so I can't rant properly now.
I first got angry at William Saletan claiming in Slate that people should dump their fat friends and get skinny ones: I'm on the skinny side myself, but I choose my friends with different criteria and so, I hope, does everybody else. The analysis he gives of the statistical data he quotes is totally nonsensical. But I often get pissed at him, so that's not surprising.
I'm much more impressed with being angry at Salon's Broadsheet, where Carol Smith advocated that it was right for a daycare center to fire a woman who didn't go to work because her husband had battered her too badly. The argument was "If her (ex) husband beats her up, she obviously is not comptetent to be a daycare center educator". Sorry? Uh? I couldn't believe my eyes. Her husbands beats her and it's her fault? And a woman says that? Angry is too weak a word. Maybe it's a good occasion to stop reading both Salon and Slate and get much more productive.
Update: it turns out women under 30 aren't allowed to choose which contraceptive method they want to use. That is, they are, so long as it's not tube tying. In fact, one can still have children after that, by IVF. The ovaries don't get removed or altered. But of course, women aren't ever really grownups, right?

It's that time of the year

Several weeks of summer vacations await me. So of course there has been a tremendous last-minute rush of things to do, especially since everyone else seems to have left at mid July. So I was the only one to answer the phone when questions arose from the administration.
Also my research students wanted extra office hours (we are talking of something like a total of three hrs/day in the last two weeks).
The paper with PD#1 and S#6 is finally ready. I am very, very happy with it, even though it is not a very great result. It is one of the few cases where I started with an idea of my own and saw it become slowly true. Of course I wouldn't have made it without my coauthors, but still it was my dream first.

I have said a bit too many times "yes" in the past few months, which means that I have agreed to write a number of non research articles of different kinds. I had the brilliant idea of planning to finish them all during the summer vacation: after all, for two weeks we are visiting my parents, and for one week we are going to a hotel with childcare.
The trouble is of course that my parents aren't willing to look after the children unaided for longer than 15 minutes, if at all, and that in previous occasions the hotel's children entertainment, while highly appreciated by C#1 and C#3, failed to satisfy the more discriminating taste of C#2. As a result, I was free to do any activity which could be performed while having on my lap 16 Kilos of child and/or running after said child who was obviously in training for some daycare level survival training.
So I will just summarize here the list of articles I have agreed to write, so that I can look at it occasionally:

1. an expository article on a topic I know very well, but from an angle I am not familiar with;
2. a short autobiography for a site about careers of women in science;
3. a short article on the relation between women and science for a magazine with a mostly medical audience;
4. another expository article on a topic I know very well, but which completely lacks readable references;
5. a short expository article on part of my recent work;
6. a short expository article about what I hope will become my future area of research;
7. a very short article on the life of Emmy Noether, of which I know very little.
   

Due dates are basically all in September, but I should plan in finishing during the vacation, because afterwards the doctoral students will need even more time. And, I will have to seriously start nagging C#1 about her homework (last year she didn't do any... and WS isn't really very good at this kind of things, so it's my chore).

Mediterranean diet

My children's school provides lunch, and no other food is available, nor are they allowed to bring more than a midmorning snack from home. Lunch is planned by a dietologist and supervised by the teachers; the only drink served with lunch is tap water. This is not a fancy private school, but the state one - the one that everyone complains about.
At home we usually cook from scratch, with help from our freezer: some things are cooked in large amounts, portioned, frozen, and microwaved at need. We also eat plenty of less healthy stuff, but fresh fruit, some vegetables, and yogurt are general favorites.
None of this is special, and indeed most other families cook more: typically, a main meal should include two cooked courses and one cooked side dish. We tend to have one cooked dish and sides that need only short or no cooking: for instance raw tomatoes and bell peppers, briefly cooked carrots and peas. Drinking tap water or bottled nonsparkling water is also standard practice here.
Reading this article and especially the corresponding comment thread made me feel quite lucky. It even made me a bit less ashamed of my and WS's own poor cooking skills.

Homeopathy for scientists

Twice described in her blog her successful attempts to explain to some relatives why homeopathic medication can't possibly work. I am of course impressed by her ability to discuss such topics with her family - I certainly wouldn't attempt that with my parents (and successfully silence my husband, who thinks homeopathy belongs in the group with astrology and superstition). More importantly, I must add that I did use homeopathic remedies myself, and gave them to my children.

I took homeopathic pills when I couldn't sleep because of contractions during my twin pregnancy. I never had serious problems, but in the last two months I was waking up many times per night and contractions, summer heat and double worries made it hard to fall asleep again. So every time I just took a few of my little white pills, and let them slowly melt under my tongue. I thought of my wonderful midwife who had given me the pills, and felt confident, relaxed and happy. I had made it once and would make it again. Did the pills help? Sure they did, even if they contained sugar as only scientifically detectable ingredient.

Does this mean I think homeopathy can work? No. I'm a scientist, and I can do the maths myself. But placebo effect works, as described e.g. in a long article in Der Spiegel a few weeks ago (sorry, I seem to be unable to find an internet reference). Homeopathy can indeed cure actual health problems by placebo effect, and no scientist should be ashamed to admit that. Because the placebo effect can be measured!

I also have another use for it, when the children have an illness for which the doctor recommends to just wait and do nothing since it will go away by itself. The following sample dialog happened several times, with different values for X and different pairs child/disease.
X: "Have you heard how bad C#3's cough is? You should (insert random proposal)!"
Me: "Don't worry, I am already curing him with homeopathic tablets".
X: "Oh well, are you sure it works?"
Me: "Well, the doctor said it could work, it doesn't have side effects, and we can still use something stronger if it doesn't work."
X: "Ok, but don't wait too long."

Nasty thoughts

In the local news today was the story of a very unlucky man who was caught by a stroke while on his boat, and died immediately. They were near to the coast, so someone heard his 6 years old son's cries for help and rescued him. My first thought was one of deep sympathy for this man and for his family, having to face such a sudden, tragic death. This was also, very appropriately, the tone used in the newspaper article.
My second thought was unfortunately really nasty. The man who died was over sixty; what would the news have said had it been a 60+ old woman dying in front of her 6-yr old child? Would they all have resisted temptation to say "We told you it was wrong to have children when you're so old"?

Old age strikes hard and unexpectedly

Yesterday morning I pulled a muscle. While turning in the bed. I was handicapped the whole day, unable to deal with children, carry my laptop, and look leftwards. I had trouble swallowing and lifting any weight.
Today it's better, but not ok. I just hope this is not old age, otherwise I'll start sharing Leopardi's viewpoint. Except of course he never was as old as I am now.

Exhausted

Today I picked up C#1 who had been visiting my parents. This involved a large number of hours on the train, with a shining sun and no air conditioning. I found some time to talk mathematics to S#3, who just needs to open his eyes, notice that his thesis is finished, and write it up. Hopefully this will happen soon.

I also spent some time equarreling (quarreling via email) with a number of colleagues, that are finding the most incredible excuses why they never can take into account what I say. I find that saying "I hadn't heard of that" from a recipient of an email which comes with a date and an hour and has been cc's to about 20 other people is ridiculous. I don't know if they will ever take me seriously. But I know that I can at least force them to listen to me, and I definitely will. Maybe if I am harassing enough, they'll do what I ask in the hope that I shut up.

The biggest change

The theme chosen for this scientiae-carnival is Transitions.

This made me think. What was the biggest change in my life? Several natural choices are available: maternity, marriage, graduation... I first thought of discussing how it was to get tenure, something that was more important to me than marriage and children. Or maybe my first research result? My first paper on a toplevel journal? I finally concluded that no, it was none of the above.

The biggest change in my life was starting university. In particular, I remember the sunny morning when I found out I had been admitted.

Starting university in a top-level college meant that I overnight stopped being weird and became normal. I felt welcomed in a community which accepted me as I was, and didn't demand of me things that I couldn't or wouldn't do. Suddenly the fact that I don't understand much of fashion, or am clumsy in my movements, or have a very loud voice didn't count anymore. The shape of my nose and the size of my clothes stopped having any importance. What counted was my ability and willingness to work very hard, learn a lot, and eventually give my own contribution. I started respecting myself more.

The other key fact is that they paid me to do it. A few weeks after that sunny morning, I stopped being financially dependent on my parents: my grant included room and board, and some pocket money. Science has kept me ever since. Over the years, money was invested in me by a number of funding agencies, in my country and abroad: besides being useful in the obvious way, the money also helped me gain my parents' respect.

Not so long before starting university, I had seen the movie "Yentl" (yes, I'm old). As I stood there, contemplating my name in the list of the admitted, a song* from that movie resonated inside me: "There are moments you remember all your life. This is one of those moments".

*In the movie, the song celebrates the admission of a young woman (dressed as a man) to a male only school. It took me a long time to realize that it was appropriate in more than one way.