Movie rerereview

A movie review is what you write after having seen a movie. A movie rerereview is what you write after having read what someone wrote after talking to someone who saw a movie.

I'm talking about Fermat's room, and I am going only to make comments on the (re)review. It's a movie about four mathematicians who get together to solve(?) Goldbach's conjecture. It's apparently an appreciated movie (possibly because the actual purpose of the meeting is to kill them all).

What I found most incredible is "four mathematicians who don't know each other". What? Four number theorists, good enugh that it at all makes sense to assume that they have a chance at Goldbach's conjecture, and they don't know each other?

Parents undressed

Slate has an article with the fascinating title "Are children harmed by seeing their parents naked?". The article itself is even more fascinating, since it completely avoids the question in the title. It starts by declaring that no studies exist, so in a sense the answer is "we don't know".
It then proceeds to say that younger children may not notice and in any case will not remember, so they should be no problem.
Mercifully, it also mentions that breastfeeding doesn't cause trouble, at least at age 12 months. I can't say anything about later ages since my kids decided to stop breastfeeding not much later than that.
It then goes on to discuss possible problem mentioned by adolescent psychiatrists. However, no evidence is given for such problems. It finishes by explaining at what age children want to stop using the other sex's bathroom, and what age girls don't want to be bathed by father any longer.
There are a few points I would like to raise. First of all, it should be very easy to study children of nudists, and see whether they have any specific sexual trouble. After all, there are plenty of people who go vacationing in nudist beaches with children.
Then, it should be possible to compare americans with northern europeans, who are used to seeing grownup nudity (e.g., when people change bathing suits on the beach they don't cover up).
Finally, a few remarks about my own kids. We are raising them as I was raised: going to the bathrrom for solid reasons demands a closed door, since concentration is required; any other activity does not prevent the use of the bathroom by the rest of the family. If you think this is crazy, try to grow up in a household with only one bathroom and see where this leads you.
My children know how they differ from each other, and from us. We have explained that grown ups have hair under their armpits and between their legs, that men have a larger didi then boys, and that girls and women have a didi so small that it's hard to see. We also explained that women need a diaper on a regular babies, since they loose blood; this is the blood which forms a nest for a baby inside the mother, and when it has been there too long and no baby needs it, it gets thrown out before it goes rotten.
My kids are squeamish about using the "wrong" public toilet, and they insist that their clothing and haircut corresponds to societal standard for their gender. They also prefer to pee privately, I suspect (but have only circumstantial evidence) so as not to use toilet paper.
I always saw my parents naked, and I grew up more or less normal. Or maybe I didn't, and haven't noticed yet.
However, one question about this article is really, really important to me now: is there a way to make sure boys do not want to be bathed by mommy anymore? I certainly wouldn't mind sharing the bathing duties along gender lines: C#1 showers on her own, needing only a look to check that all the shampoo has been rinsed from the head, while the twins resist and C#2 has still a strong opposition to having his hair washed. Had I known for sure that less nudity in the household would have led to me avoiding bathing duties for the twins, I would bought a burqa years ago.

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 end of summer

Actually summer isn't finished yet. School start is yet more than two weeks away, and bathing season might go on even a little longer than that. But today it's raining hard, and my personal vacation is finished, while the child minder isn't.
So what did I achieve this summer? Nothing from a professional viewpoint. I didn't do anything at all for more than three weeks. I slept a lot, ate more than usual, and enjoyed my children. I even managed not to quarrel with my parents (I must admit they also tried very hard).
The children did a few amazing things: C#1 managed to write one nice diary entry as part of her homework. For the twins, C#2 stays dry through the night, and C#3 has learned to swim, but not conversely. The whole family has a very impressive suntan, and in particular the children have blatantly inherited my mediterrenean complexion and not WS's milky one.
I am now slowly trying to go back in a worklike frame of mind, which isn't easy since I have only very few hours per day to work and everybody else seems to be still vacationing. On the other hand, a lot of work is clearly lurking on the horizon.
I am excited and worried at the same time. As a child, I remember thinking that the end of summer/beginning of fall period feels much more like the beginning of a new year than Jan 1st does. As an adult, I feel this even more strongly. So happy new year to everybody!

I finally read the Deathly Hallows

I know, everybody else has finished it weeks ago - and so far, I have only found time for one reading and one quick rereading. But I still wanted to write a short review, without spoilers.
Or, rather, since I seem to be uncapable of a coherent review, a list of remarks.

• There's so much there about the trouble of growing up, and the specific case of doing so in a boarding school. Very british, all that, including the division in houses.
• I have staid in a student dorm for years. We didn't have four houses, but a clear cut division science/humanities. I really felt at home at Hogwarts. (I know, this contradicts the above. So sue me).
  
• I didn't like very much the writing style. Some parts are just too long, to my taste. Luckily I read really fast.
• I love the new words she invents. I wish we could hire J.K. Rowling and have her name all new mathematical concepts.
  
• I disliked the epilogue. Sorry. Too much information, and at the same time not enough.
  
• I am kind of impressed that such a mainstream novel is completely and totally atheistic. In particular the characters face a lot of life-and-death choices in a very moral (or immoral, as the case may be) way without the need to refer to any organized religion. I am wondering in particular whether JKR purposefully wanted to show that life and death can have a sense even without a belief in a life after death. A question that I never found easy.
• I find the atmosphere of loss of democracy through/followed by ad hoc laws and a control of the media extremely disturbing. Maybe because I see so much media control in reality. Of course in fact she's just giving as a history course, and the worst things she mentions are in our past and (hopefully) not in our future.
  
• I want to make a final remark which contains a spoiler. So I am putting it as first comment.
  

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?

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.

Online quiz results are usually meaningless

... but maybe this result should tell me something.

You Are 4% Girly

Um... you're a guy, right? If not, you're the most boyish girl in the world. And for you, that's probably the ultimate compliment.

How Girly Are You?

A meme

Twice tagged me with a simple meme, so I might be able to produce a readable post while listening to five children playing in the garden.

Rules

• I have to post these rules before I give you the facts.
  
• Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
  
• People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
  
• At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
  
• Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.
  

Random Facts

1. I utterly dislike most of a traditional housewife's chores: cooking, cleaning, ironing, etc. I am also mildly to very bad at each of these activities. However, I really enjoy grocery shopping. I like it so much that my children think it's fun and are always eager to come with me - they are quiet and helpful, which is quite unlike they usual behaviour.
   
2. I speak four languages fluently, and can read without big problems easy texts (say, mistery novels) in two or three more.
   
3. As a mathematician, I am a very slow learner; as a consequence, there is a lot of classical, standard stuff that I would like to know and don't.
   
4. I don't like music very much. I don't mind it, and I even have gotten used to some of it, but it remains a very minor pleasure for me. I don't dance, if I can at all avoid it.
   
5. I used to be a serious soccer fan: from age 12 to 18 I had a yearly ticket for the team of my home town.
   
6. I do not use computer programming in my work, and I never did. I tried once for a few months, and found it depressingly difficult.
   
7. I often read while getting dressed, eating, and brushing my teeth. And in most other "spare" moments.
   
8. I cut my children's hair myself.
   

I read a number of blogs by people who are too busy to write often. Therefore I'll tag IP at Irrational Point Soapbox, Åkerbäret at Tur i Oturen, Am I a Woman Scientist, and The Astrodyke. Yes, I gave myself a fifty percent discount on choosing eight names.

Running late

I got to stay in the office late since I'm doing family work - i.e., booking the travel for a forthcoming trip. Now I got a desperate phone call: we just have one liter of milk left! For the whole family!

I think when I was living with my parents, even as a child, I never saw a milk carton larger than half a liter. most of the time, there was no milk at home. I would make some deep remarks but if I do the Last Food Store will close.

Slacking

Yesterday I spent three hours explaining some results of mine and UnCo to anothe visiting professor here. Funnily enough, it was precisely the same stuff UnCo had explained last thursday. At least I'm not the only one who finds it hard to figure out what he's talking about. In the afternoon I sat through another talk of UnCo, which was really bad. Apparently he had been feeling very sick and didn't prepare at all. The secondo talk was really great, though.

This morning I overslept, and spent most of my afternoon trying to concentrate; when I noticed it wasn't working, I did a little of overdue email work. And not even a lot of that.

Two noteworthy links (yes, I did spend time idling online). One is about high-heeled shoes, and why they are bad for your feet. As if this wasn't obvious to everyone who had had the occasion to try them on. The otheris a fantastic technical description about what the so-called partial birth abortion is good for. Not to kill a beautiful, healthy fetus who has the bad luck to sit in the belly of a heartless woman, but to give a woman who carries a doomed, or possibly dead, fetus, and who may or may not have serious health problems herself, to give end the pregnancy with the least possible damage to her own body. The idea that the only reasonable alternative is to dismember the fetus, so that the mother can't possibly hold it afterwards, is really appalling me.

Paper finished!

First, the big news: in the afternoon I fixed the paper with WS! It is now essentially ready, and we might start to informally circulate it next week. Our first joint paper after the twins... how romantic. We definitely should dedicate it to them, as we did for the corresponding paper after the birth of C#1. Feel free to imagine me dancing, shouting, and drinking (the drinking part hasn't yet become reality, but I'll work on it later in the day).

Yesterday I had dinner with two much older colleagues. In fact, each of them is old enough to be my father. It was a very pleasant dinner, with a lot of historical and philosophical discussions. I hope I will stay as smart as I grow old. It also gave me back the feeling of being a young girl, which I had otherwise lost long ago.

This morning I didn't do maths. First I cleaned up my flat: I am by nature a total slob, but it was so dirty it started to bother me. As a reward for doing a good deed, I did see a hare from a very short distance. The last time I saw a hare was here, on my previous visit. I haven't seen any hare otherwise in my life.

Between yesterday and lunchtime I finished reading the four books I started three days ago: two lent by UnCo, and two bought by me in the local language, which I can read although not speak. It was really great. I love reading, and if books were alcohol I would have become a member of AA before I turned 5. Plus, the two books in the local language I'll read again and again, so that I can learn more words and expressions. The woman at the local bookstore gave me really good advice.

And then I cleared up for UnCo a misconception he had about an exact sequence. Tensor products are nasty things, and the notation we use is ambiguous and potentially confusing. Actually, it is standard since about four decades, so I think the correct viewpoint is that it's UnCo that gets easily confused, but I didn't tell him that.

How I learned algebraic topology

Some people can learn out of books. This is actually a good option if you want to learn algebraic topology nowadays; there's plenty of good books, some even in my native language, and some can be downloaded for free (legally!).
But I'm not good at studying on my own, so I took a course in my second undergraduate year. The course was attended by a grand total of two students, and none of my friends took it. It turned out to be a fabulous course. The professor, undaunted by the paucity of the audience, gave a series of beautiful lectures, covered a lot of material some of which wasn't even published yet, and gave us a huge amount of handwritten notes to support the reference textbooks.

Algebraic topology is a strange beast. In a sense, it is extremely intuitive: it gives precise meaning to statements like "a donut has one hole, but a pretzel has three" and allows you to generalize such statements to objects you can't visualize at all. However, when you seriously want to study it, you discover you need a lot of technical tools, and it's easy to loose the intuitive aspects. The handwritten notes we were given were largely hand drawn; it's thanks to them that I kept my intuition alive all that year, and a combination of that and of differential topology has become a substantial part of the subtly warped bag of mathematical tools that allow me sometimes to see more, or differently, than many more talented and informed colleagues.

Most of all, I was fascinated by the professor herself. She kept her hair short, clean but untidy, wore baggy jeans and a poncho, and didn't try to hide either the first few gray hair or a reasonably substantial moustache. She was tall, strong, loud, and wore thick nonfashionable glasses. She brought to the course an incredible enthousiasm, and brought us so far that we each decided to read a piece of more advanced stuff on our own instead of the usual question-and-answers exam. In my case, I studied a whole book. I didn't understand it very well, and the professor was not terribly impressed. She still gave me a top mark, although when she saw that I had top marks in all the mathematics exams, she jokingly regretted having done so.

The following summer, I sat down with a helpful, older student to figure out whom I should choose as thesis advisor. I knew: I wanted her, the woman who looked like me, the person who could bring homological algebra to life. Plus, she was working on an exciting project for a concrete description of something exotic called cohomology. But my friend discouraged me: he said that I should choose instead my future advisor, who was a rising star in a field which is popular in my country, while algebraic topology professors are few and far apart. Plus, he added, the professor I so liked had been promoted and was leaving anyway.

The advice was completely correct. My advisor and I have been a fantastic match, and the algebraic topology professor left mathematical research for didactic of mathematics; she also never came back to my alma mater, and I have seen her once only since, about ten years ago. As for the situation in my country, in each of the three universities where I have worked so far I have been the algebraic topology reference person, based on that one lonely course so many years ago, because most people didn't even know as much.

Besides teaching me a fantastic amount of mathematics, she taught me that I didn't have to look like my mother told me all women should look like; that I could choose to wear comfortable rational clothes, and derive intense pleasure from a job where nobody cared how I looked like. Even more importantly, she taught me that it is not important how many people are listening to you: what counts is that you always do your best.

I didn't understand all of this immediately, and I would certainly not have been able to put it into words at the time. I kept wearing makeup, and skirts, and uncomfortable shoes. But the she has helped me become the myself that I am today. And my first paper with WS has two main theorems, and not one, because I knew enough hands-on algebraic topology (who knows, maybe it even helped me impress WS?).

I wouldn't say my Algebraic Topology professor ever felt like a mother to me. She actually didn't look motherly at all, despite a very feminine body that the poncho disguised but became pretty obvious with the arrival of summer. But when I read that next month's scientiae-carnival topic is mothers and others, women who have influenced us along the way, I immediately thought of her.

Laboring Day

I celebrated Labor Day by working very hard the whole day. I met my student S#4 this morning, than I worked on the joint project with PD#1 and S#6, and
then I spent the afternoon discussing PDE's with UnCo. Turns out he couldn't solve a system of them because he was looking for a polynomial solution and the answer was an exponential function.

I cooked myself a decent dinner, and after another short chat with UnCo I watched a very good Kaurismaki movie, about a man who has forgotten his name and everything else. I like Kaurismaki, but this was the first time I saw a movie of his in the original finnish language. I am proud to say that I had no trouble reading the swedish subtitles.

C#3 is fine and healthy, it appears. So all is well that ends well. And tomorrow I will work hard again.

Under the blanket of ugliness

Yesterday evening, as I went to buy groceries for dinner, I had a sudden intuition: it could happen that one of my students has a crush on me! After one minute of further deliberation, I decided that it's most likely not the case, and if it were, my best strategy is to ignore it and just make sure our relationship doesn't become too friendly.
But I kept wondering why it took me so many years of advising to realize that some such thing might at all be possible. The answer, of course, is that I am (by current standards) ugly, and have been so ever since I hit puberty. So I am used to the fact that usually people, and especially men, see me in a unsexual way.
And this has been good for me in many ways. I think I have been bothered much less than better-looking women, and in fact almost not at all.
I got used to the fact that whomever I was attracted to was most likely not attracted to me, and learned to live with it without suffering - surely a very useful lesson, especially if learned early in life.
Any human being who was ever attracted to me (a very small set anyway) was usually at least partially enthralled by my intellectual abilities, something which is by nature a bit more longlasting then physical beauty.
And very importantly for me as a scientist, male colleagues were not so tempted to discuss my looks instead of my theorems. I remember overhearing a comment "I don't know what she talked about, I was looking lower than the blackboard" after a talk by a good-looking woman wearing some ever so slightly tight-fitting trousers. This is unlikely to happen to me - and since then I always make sure to show up at conferences wearing non-revealing clothing to be on the safe side.
Ugliness has been a shelter for me, a bit like Harry Potter's invisibility blanket. As a teenager, I was very unhappy with it, but now I regard it as a blessing. I think for a really beautiful woman it is harder to be taken seriously as a mathematician.
I also have started to really like my looks. When I have time, I buy clothes with pleasure, and I appreciate the fact that I want first and foremost to look good to myself. It is also easier to make a few adjustments to accommodate the few preferences of WS: for instance, not cutting my hair really short, and wearing warm instead of cold and/or dark colours. It is much less effort than trying to keep up with a forever changing fashion and our society's unreasonable demands on women (uncomfortable clothing and shoes and unpleasant body hair removal spring first to mind, but do not exhaust the list).
Now I just have to find the time to get a haircut and buy clothes. Maybe next week.

I should be working

You scored as Hermione Granger. You're extremely hard-working and will not feel satisfied with yourself unless you've given everything your all. You're very intelligent and make good use of your witty remarks and astounding ability to insult people. You tend to be a stickler for the rules but are smart enough to know that rules sometimes need to be broken. Your major downfall, however, is your fear of failure, which you should have no reason to fear. You love your friends but also like to keep them in line. Hermione Granger 81% Oliver Wood 66% Luna Lovegood 59% Harry Potter 56% Percy Weasley 53% Sirius Black 50% Albus Dumbledore 47% Severus Snape 47% Bellatrix Lestrange 44% Ron Weasley 44% Neville Longbottom 44% Lord Voldemort 44% Remus Lupin 34% Draco Malfoy 25% Harry Potter Character Combatibility Test created with QuizFarm.com