Daft Musings

A few weeks ago, Neil happened to meet famous mathematician Bill Gosper at the Julia Robinson Math Festival. Gosper and Neil kept in touch via email afterwards (both keeping me in the loop). Finally, Peter and I dared to invite Gosper over for dinner. He accepted, at which point Peter and I wondered whatever could we say to keep up our end of the conversation. We decided Neil could do the talking for both of us, and we’d just try to shut up, because speaking would only expose how little we knew, and how very much we’d forgotten.

As it turns out, it was a wonderful evening. Almost upon arriving (and after giving Neil some gifts which included Mandelbrot’s book, which Neil’s only previously had from the library), Gosper turned on his lapbook and proceeded to give Neil the most amazing advanced mathematics lesson. I was busy trying to figure out the Sam Loyd buttonhold trap he’d set up and munching on some Indian restaurant snacks Gosper had brought, but at a certain point, I figured I ought to peek over Neil’s shoulder on this. It involved Fibonacci’s numbers, fractions, and the multiplication of matrices (which I have to proudly say I’d just taught Neil two months ago), together with asides about how mathematical computation software programs work, and anecdotes about other famous mathematicians. I tried to pull Peter out of the kitchen to check it out, but he was still busy cooking.

By the time Peter had gotten the lasagna into the oven, Gosper was showing Neil how to compare apples to oranges. More specifically, he showed him how Macsyma can convert, say, miles per gallon to acres. As an aside, I have to point out that the mental speed Gosper was working on was the one I have to throttle Neil back from a lot, i.e. turbo. Normal people, like me, have to see the steps to a result in order to understand it. Luckily, just 2 or 3 weeks ago, the chemistry lecture we watched for C&S dealt with conversions, so I understood the steps between 23 miles per gallon and and acres (hint, it’s an inverted number!) but I had to fill that in myself.

Neil seemed to be following along just fine, so once again I’m lost on what to do for his education. I had to toss the Algebra II course I’d planned to give him because I looked at it and saw it covered subjects Neil’s already done. I’m going to test him through (and maybe out) of another text, which includes some stuff I’m not sure he knows, but then what? Trigonometry? Probability? Calculus?

The lesson ended when dinner was ready. Oh, and did I mention Bill Gosper also happens to be friends with the guy who invented the aerobie? So he brought Neil two aerobies signed to him by Alan Adler. We went out to the nearby schoolground to toss aerobies (not the signed ones) and other flying objects until it became dark. Then we showed Gosper our Khet game, which got a pass for its bad laser sights. Instead, Gosper loaned Neil a cube packing puzzle to solve, which he had to wait until morning to solve because it was his bedtime.

So it’s not every day you get to have a famous mathematician visit, so it was really cool. I fell asleep and dreamt of mathematical equations, which has never happened to me before.

For Neil’s break between sixth and seventh grade, we took a two-week vacation. I asked Neil what he wanted to do, and besides play on the computer, he wanted to revisit the Lawrence Hall of Science, one of his favorite science museums in the Bay Area.

For the last few years, we’ve been lucky to have a friend coming along with us,whether it was his friend Ryan from school, or Ethan, the son of a friend. But this time, we went up on a week day, to beat the crowds, even though the Lawrence Hall of Science is rarely crowded.

Honestly, I think the next time we go, we’ll go on a weekend again, because as I discovered, several things are closed on weekdays, like the biology room where you can see and pet animals, and the planetarium show. Nontheless, we had fun. Neil was mostly there to play with the Kapla blocks, and he made several constuctions larger than himself, like this:

And I never get tired of the spectacular view over the Bay from the Lawrence Hall of Science’s outdoor earth science exhibit area. Here is the view looking out over the Bay Bridge and to the fog-shrouded Golden Gate Bridge:

Kelly was finally old and mature enough to try some of the math games in the downstairs and to try the amazing maze herself. The special Grossology exhibit, however

didn’t appeal to either Neil or Kelly. However, I know some children (like the Ethan mentioned above) for whom the exhibit would have been just the thing.

Neil wanted to buy himself some Kapla bricks because he enjoys them so much, but as I’d remembered, they were still prohibitively expensive. So we’ll just have to go back.

I’ve been thinking, if there was a zombie invasion, who would I rather hole up with: the Baptists or the Mormons? Both these Christian sects are in good shape to hold off zombies. They keep provisions and have killer homemaking skills, they have guns and people who know how to shoot them, and a broad selection of family-friendly board games and movies to stave off boredom.

Of course, the very first question any one who knows me and Peter would ask, is why wouldn’t we go with either of our default religions? Well, it may be sacrilegious, but neither Buddhists nor Catholics are well-known for their zombie deterrence skills.

I suspect the typical Buddhist would sigh and submit to zombie-hood, in the hopes that one might find oneself a less harmful zombie than most; the priests may have some more advanced skills for actual combat, which they may or may not wish to employ, it is not yours to question. This may be a reason Buddhism hasn’t really caught on strongly in America, where people like to be a bit more proactive, at least when it comes to zombie defense.

Catholics would probably deal with zombies the same as they do with demons, namely, give exorcism a go. It saves on weaponry costs, but frankly, I think the Latin scholarship in Catholic schools has been seriously lagging since Vatican II. I don’t want to have to count on some guy who has to page through Wheelock’s Latin to figure out the right grammatical formation to say “Hey, you, dead guy, go to hell!” in the proper church Latin at a crucial moment. Plus, exorcism requires getting right up in the face of the exorcism-ee, which can be pretty harrowing when that exorcism-ee just wants to eat your brains.

Peter favors the Mormons, er, that is, the Latter Day Saints. He’s gone shooting with them, and he knows he can count on them to shoot straight and cover his back. They don’t drink alcohol or caffeine, but they’re plenty perky without it. Plus, Neil and Kelly will have other children to play with and distract them from the horror outside the perimeter. They tend to have really, really long services, but this probably also means they’re prepared to spend hours strategizing defense and offense against zombie hordes.

Personally, I like the Baptists. There’ll be a pot of strong coffee perpetually brewing. And there’s sure to be a big loyal hound dog or several to hold off the zombies while everyone is busy reloading. Hours of honing strategy is good and fine, but I  just want the zombies gone, so praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.

We’re lucky enough to have friends of both kinds of classic American Christianity, and frankly, we’d be happy to hole up with either kind if they’d let us. But honestly, our best chance is to just give both sects a thumbs-up for preparedness, and just hope against any zombie invasion at all.

Several years ago, our neighbors Dave and B.J. sold their house and traded it for 40 undeveloped acres separated from the Bay Area proper by a mountain range or two. I rarely see them, but this week Charybdis and Scylla was on break, and I wanted a break away from the urban hustle and bustle, even just for a day.

The last time we were there, both Neil and Kelly loved it: imagine nothing but nature, and little to do except maybe watch a video or pet some dogs. Now Neil’s more of a computer guy, and, well, rural internet connections don’t compare to urban DSL. His high-tech moment of the day was testing out this solar hat, as he did on our short midday hike:

Two small solar panels on either side got a fan going whenever it was in sunlight. It really did work, creating a little cold breeze above your head on a cold day, but Neil was more focused on its whirring noise and whether the blades could injure. Neil also wasn’t very happy that the wildlife we were going out to look for might include rattlesnakes as well as rabbits.

The big surprise was Dave, and how he had come into his own in his own homestead in a remote area I think of now as Sunshine Gulch. In our semi-urban neighborhood, he’d always been too modest and reserved to come out to neighborhood barbecues, but if any one needed help, he’d be the first person on the scene. Out here, nearly a mile away from any neighbor, he and his wife knew everyone in the entire area, even if getting to their place required a 4-wheel drive with enough oomph to scurry up a gravelly mountain and cross small rivers. A small restaurant near the junction of three counties functions as the community center and post office. The folks who farm or grow produce share their extras with those they know well, and Dave and BJ can it, smoke or cure it and put it away to consume at leisure.

Most of all, Dave had become interested and involved in conservation, which I wouldn’t have imagined about him before. But in context, it made sense. He’d always loved to go out camping in the large public park lands, and now he is actually conserving rural land himself–by having bought it for himself and his family to protect. Now he’s trying to make others aware of the importance of conserving the natural resources in any one particular area, and taking advantage of the native environment. His ideas were similar to those my environmentalist-minded homeschoolers have mentioned, such as having maximum insulation on a house to minimize heating and cooling costs; implementing solar power in sunny regions, like Dave’s region of California; and planting native and drought-resistant plants instead of a lawn with heavy watering requirements.

I’d taken their daughter Liz (who doesn’t drive) over to visit them on Tuesday, and when I went back on Saturday to pick her up, I asked Dave for a recommendation for a solar-powered shed light. He gave me a whole catalog of solar-powered devices: it’s impressive how many devices can be run with solar power (or other alternative power sources) from water pumps to air conditioners. Unfortunately, they’re also all very expensive, but when you’re miles away from the electrical power grid, or the California ISO has to ration power, solar’s more reliable.

That said, it’s a suprisingly long drive to get there, even though their home is close as far as the crow flies. To get to their homestead involves lots of switchbacks over at least two mountains, plus unpaved road, unlocking a gate and then driving in for a distance through a gravelled dirt road. Luckily, my new car can handle it better than my previous one, which almost slid off the hill last time. Both Neil and Kelly suffered from carsickness, and out of respect for Neil, at least once I took the long (but pretty) way home. It was straighter, but it was more than twice the milage. On the other hand, Kelly loved the doggies, and they (as well as the low-key homey atmosphere) had her not missing the company of zillions of other girls any more.

So we’ll probably return to Sunshire Gulch some time, even if Neil will have to make do with less-than-lightning-speed internet.

On Saturday, Peter and I received the news that Kelly did not make it into Hacienda (the science magnet), and her spot on the waiting list to get in was #278. Peter, in particular, was crushed. Last year, when the waiting list had only 130 children, she was 3 up from the bottom of the list. This year, she’s obviously also at the bottom, which is even further from the top. “Bullsh*t, it’s not a lottery; someone at district hates you,” Peter said. Sure they do: as far as I know I’m the only parent in the district who put it into public record that forcing parents to get fingerprinted with the FBI is contrary to California law, and that, at least in some classrooms, ideology trumps facts. It’s shocking that they would actually care to keep track of who I was enough to make sure I know my place and their power. But I have no regrets; and some pity for thinking parents who feel they have to commit, quietly, to being under their bureaucratic thumb.

Peter was more disappointed than me. He knows how I’ve struggled with Kelly’s very socially-oriented learning style. He mourned for the loss of Kelly having an elementary school experience like we and Neil had, with show-and-tell and singing songs, without spending thousands on a private school (a cost beyond what we’re already paying in taxes for the public schools) . But I think the middle-class-school experience is near-extinct in California, at least for Calfornians with a middle-class income that doesn’t stretch to include private school. As far as I could tell, there wasn’t show-and-tell going on in our neighborhood school either; it was more like sit still and be quiet as the teacher deals with the 5-year-old sociopaths.

Personally, it was a relief. The district may have thought Kelly will go to the neighborhood school again, so they can continue being funded for her presence, but she’ll be at my own private school with Neil again. And I’d been seriously conflicted about sending her to any of the districts’ schools. For one thing, I’d have to explain to Kelly the fact that she’d be repeating kindergarten, when she’s already mastered kindergarten skills and is well prepared for first grade. I presented the problem of Kelly’s wish for classroom life to my fellow homeschoolers, and found a 2-day-a-week academic group which we tried out and she loved. She has so many little girlfriends (all of whom I know and know their parents) that I’m sure she’s gone to just as many birthday parties as she would have if she’d been a regular school. In fact, we have a birthday party to go to this afternoon.

For me personally, there are upsides, too. I now also don’t have to get fingerprinted (as I would regrettably do, under duress, because there’s no way I wouldn’t want to be in Kelly’s classroom after having witnessed her kindergarten class at Carson.) I don’t have to waste my energy trying to help children whose parents can’t be bothered to pay attention to them, much less discipline them. I can assume Hacienda might have more families who care enough to say, show up for class on time, but I don’t think it could be as good as Neil’s intial years there. For instance, up to a third of each class has students who speak no English, and there are far fewer parent volunteers than there used to be. Obviously, we don’t have to conform to any one else’s schedule either. And if Hacienda of today turned out to be a scary nightmare, like Carson, I don’t have to deal with the downside of pulling Kelly out and having her tell me how much she misses her teacher and schoolmates–again.

So I have to work out the materials for Kelly’s first grade, and figure out how to give Neil the appropriate teaching time, too. But I think it will work out.

A few months ago, Neil participated in the Math Counts competition, which was enlightening and humbling. The program was great: all through the year, he had to work out tough mathematical challenges. In February, the Silicon Valley chapter put the students who’d been in the program to the test. It turns out, that compared to hard-core, driven Silicon Valley Asian math geeks, Neil is just average. That said, Asian Silicon Valley math geeks are frighteningly fast and brilliant, and it’s kind of an honor to have my child within their ranks.

Through one of my homeschooling lists, I heard about the Julia Robinson Math Festival, which seemed more like Neil’s scene: an afternoon with other middle- and high-school math fans solving mathematical puzzles. The program is completely volunteer-run so they asked me to volunteer some time helping get the students registered and accounted for. Neil went on into the festival while Kelly was decorating a very pretty sign.

When we were done, I went into the room where the festival was taking place. All throughout it, tables were set up with various puzzles, and any time a student solved a puzzle correctly he or she received a ticket for a book raffle. I found Neil towards the back of the room, and asked him how it was going.

He was delighted. “I just met Bill Gosper!” And then remembering that I haven’t read A New Kind of Science five times like he has, Neil added, “Bill Gosper is the inventor of the Gosper Glider Gun!” (Neil is my comeuppance for my dislike of math in high school.) I nodded and smiled, and guessed the Gosper Glider Gun was some sort of cellular automata thing. (Sigh, and now I know what cellular automata is.) It turns out I was right; Bill Gosper is what you might call a cellular automata pioneer. In any case, the fact that Neil met a mathematics genius, who just happened to have given up his day in order to help high school math students at Stanford, was certainly an honor and a surprise. Of course, today of all days, I’d left my camera at home, so I had to make do with catching to occassion with my cell phone:

It turns out, Bill Gosper was super nice, and had been delighted to meet Neil, too. Neil had solved the puzzle Gosper had set up for the festival, in record time, and in an original way. Now Neil’s corresponding with Gosper, and I am just agog. Within this year, he also got to meet Mitch Resnick and the Scratch team at MIT, and more recently got into a lively discussion with a friend of ours who may soon become a math professor at the University of Minnesota. I plan on sending my son to college, but it turns out he already has surprising access to the brilliant mathematical minds I could only hope for him to meet there.

Neil happily continued working on math puzzles, and Kelly quickly befriended Dewina, another young sister of a math fiend. When Kelly’s friend left I took Kelly across campus to see the Stanford art museum. On the way, we passed by the Hoover Pavillion, which often has an interesting exhibit. Right now, the exhibit was The Road to World War II. As with the Pasternak exhibit I saw several years ago, it was well done, and awfully interesting and informative.

Regrettably, by the time we got to the art museum, our time was running short, so we rushed through it. There was a too-somber exhibit on the mourning for Leland Stanford, Jr., but I had fun showing Kelly how to pose like the Degas and Rodin sculptures, and that the driftwood horse was actually made of bronze.

Dewina’s mother had told me the end-of-festival lecture was usually very good, so I planned on seeing it. It turned out to be on eight-dimensional tic-tac-toe, something way more to Neil’s interests than mine. Luckily, Dewina had come back, and Kelly happily continued playing with her until the festival’s end. The other good thing about this festival was that is was a networking center for all sorts of other math programs and clubs in the area, like the San Jose Math Circle. So now there are more math events for Neil to enjoy his math love at, because I know I can’t keep up with him already.

My last few posts have been rather down, but I was beginning to cheer up. Then, last night, I kept waking up from dreams based on Natural Born Killers.

Then today, I loaded my children in the car to take them to the Grange, where I could check out a (sort of) a homeschool group activity. It wasn’t far away, but I figured I’d take my GPS device out of the car compartment where I keep it hidden. To my surprise, the compartment was open, as was my glove compartment…and the GPS was gone. Which meant, that sometime in the night, someone walked right into my drive way, and had the chutzpah to open my car and riffle through it. The mysterious bandit didn’t take anything else of value that I can recall: the stereo was still intact, and even the CDs were left behind. But once again I had the horrible sinking feeling that the outrageous doomsday predictions of people like Gerard Celente may be more accurate than I would hope.

We’ve lived in our house for nearly 14 years, and until this year, there was no crime on our cul-de-sac-like end of the street. But in February, Peter’s car window was smashed in and his GPS stolen–also from right within our drive way. It was awful, but suddenly, my decision to always hide my GPS device when not in use seemed prudent, not paranoid. Now apparently, even that isn’t enough, because the thieves are getting bold enough to try doors anywhere…and everywhere, in the hopes of finding something of negligible value.

I hope it’s just unlucky isolated incidents, and not part of a bigger trend with the deteriorating economy.

Last month, to teach Neil a bit about the stock market and to watch its current trends ourselves, Peter set up a stock market game for the family. To say I was pessimistic at the time may have been a bit of an understatement. I had recently seen this graph based on the Congressional Budget Office’s analysis of our runaway government spending  (source: Washington Post, March 21, 2009)

Economists were already sounding the alarm about the consequences of our expansive debt as created under G.W. Bush and 110th Congress. And then along comes President Obama and the 111th Congress and the deficit quadruples! It’s like happy happy lenderman all over again, except with government largesse instead of houses. Holy freakin’ Weimar Republic, Batman! I could use a little less stimulation, and a lot more financial prudence!

I had no idea what stocks to buy, given that in my opinion, everything would soon be worthless. I didn’t plan to play the game too hard, so when Peter reminded me I needed to pick some stocks, I (as Peter would say) took a piss, and put it into guns, missiles, gasoline, and gold, leaving some soon-to-be-not-so-hard currency aside for bribes, canned goods, or financing a quick getaway. Besides straight gold, I bought stock in Smith and Wesson, Ruger, Anadarko Petroleum, and Textron (a manufacturer of guided missile systems.)

Peter was more serious and put his virtual money into companies he believed had good fundamentals and a solid business model for our current economy. He bought Amazon, since it’s clear people are trying to avoid the higher sales taxes being levvied. I mean, at this point, we’ve already bought shampoo and food via Amazon, so we know its model and like it. And he bought American Airlines, which was (in Peter’s opinion) undervalued.

Neil was interested in technology, particularly green technology. He bought stock in Oilsands Quest, which extracts oil from shale; and believing it was an environmental science company, Perma-Fix Environmental. It turns out Perma-Fix specializes in disposing of nuclear waste, but they were also the big gainer in Neil’s portfolio.

Here’s the final results, though they may be hard to read. In short, I won with $1,273.58 gain over the course of them month, leaving behind Neil whose stocks went up by $1055.53; Peter, who earned $769.02; and Kelly, whose cash in a money market fund only went up by $7.28.

The stock market is tells you what investors know and are thinking, and that isn’t always in the direction the news stories of the day are going. Despite the fundamentals of Amazon, Oilsands, and American Airlines, these stocks did just ok. Gold remained steady, though you’d expect it to appreciate in the context of what’s being done to the value of the U.S. dollar. Gun stocks did pretty well; though reportedly they had their real run-up shortly after the election.

The stocks that were real winners were Textron (missile defense) and Perma-Fix Environmetal (nuclear waste disposal.) That’s even more Armaggeddon than I’d been thinking, though I don’t know how useful it is to own stocks in a nuclear wasteland.

The success of gasoline stocks was more understandable: as a limited, consumable commodity, the more money there is in circulation, the more money will be competing for it. My Anadarko Petroleum stocks did well for me. In fact, Peter and I moved our real stock market money out of cash and put it into real gasoline stocks based in countries which haven’t already nationalized their gasoline reserves or are in danger of nationalizing or punitively taxing their energy companies. So if (when?) gas prices climb this summer, we won’t be complaining as much, because the profits are flowing back to us, too.

So our game was entertaining and informative, and it showed us a good place to invest our real funds.  I also won $50 thanks to my Armageddon picks, but I’m not sure I’m all that thrilled that the real money out there is making forecasts towards an apocalypse.

On Tuesday morning, Kelly started moaning and crying and then ran to throw up. Normally, in these circumstances, I simply declare her sick and she has to stay home for the day. But by then, the news services in full-on panic mode about a new viral strain that had been dubbed swine flu. Peter and I knew if anyone would be a receiver and a vector, it would be Kelly, with her myriad friendships and all the playgroups, community classes, and storytimes. And so, even though we knew it would cost us, I called Kelly’s doctor and got an appointment for her to be seen that morning.

The doctor’s office wasn’t taking any chances either. After I registered Kelly, she was given a face mask to wear. I told her it was special disguise, and she didn’t have any problem keeping it on. I complained to the nurse that I felt like a hypochondriac bringing Kelly in, but I was told that I certainly wasn’t the first or only parent doing this, given the news.

The doctor was practical about the matter, which I appreciated. She examined Kelly, who was, by this time, perky, happy, and not running a temperature. She told me she could run a test swab for swine flu, but given that Kelly didn’t seem that sick, she’d rather not overwhelm the system with unlikely cases. I agreed. She did take a test for strep throat, but I declined to take it in. The doctor didn’t think Kelly had caught a deadly, fatal flu, and that’s really all I wanted to know. We agreed I’d bring Kelly back if she worsened. Kelly’s fine now.

However, I noticed this week that Kelly’s events are more sparsely attended that usual. I barely had any takers for my craft at the homeschoolers’ park group, and only about half as many children as usual showed up for Andrew’s storytime. At grocery stores, I see people taking the wipes that are offered and wiping down shopping carts with them. I respect the precaution, but I have to wonder if the news about the flu isn’t just a little overblown.

I originally planned to take the children to the De Young Museum today; and another homeschool parent had told me about a free hands-on science day as CSU-Hayward; but in the end, I decided what I would rather do this weekend than on any other is to visit the Charles M. Schulz Museum again with my family.

Better known to us at the Snoopy Museum, it honors the work of cartoonist Charles M. Schulz, which is mostly his work on the Peanuts cartoon strip. It’s a small museum, but very comfortable: you can read selected (rotating strips) from the cartoon in a gallery, look at Peanuts-themed art work, romp and play with Peanuts themes in a garden area, or make your own attempts at cartooning and art (and watch Peanuts cartoons) in a special room upstairs. I figured the fact that, today the Schulz Museum had a real astronaut appearing in honor of Snoopy’s association with NASA, would make up for skipping out on a science day at CSU-Hayward.

We arrived barely in time to catch the presentation. The visiting astronaut, Dan Tani, spoke about his 4 months in the International (that is, Russian & American) Space Station, and showed the dramatic pictures he’d taken of Earth while in space. The audience’s questions were remarkably good: for instance, they prompted Tani to recount that when his American colleague on the station returned to earth, a malfunction during the descent caused the shuttle to speed down, and she survived 9Gs of force. We also got a better idea of how big the space station is, what it looks like inside, and what it’s like to live and work inside it.

When Tani went out to personally meet and greet the museum visitors, we checked out the Snoopy in Space exhibit. Kelly and I couldn’t resist the chance to dress up in astronaut gear and pretend we were astronauts in a space shuttle ourselves:

Just before it was time for him to leave, the long line to see Tani shortened, and I grabbed my family for a chance to meet him. He was just as personable and outgoing as he’d been on stage, even after chatting with strangers for an hour. Neil told him one of his father’s friends had helped design the “spheres” on the station, and Tani tried to get Kelly to come out of her shy attack for the picture I wanted to take of his and the children (to no avail.)

Kelly was full of excitement about seeing Snoopy and meeting an astronaut, so we went outside to the garden, where Neil tried to share a cookie with Snoopy while Kelly was distracted by Woodstock.

Then we went upstairs, where the art project of the day was creating a zoetrope. Neil made one that was pretty impressive, and hopefully he’ll turn it into an animation and put it up on his own web site.

So it was a perfect activity: fun, family-friendly, and interesting and informative. We love the Snoopy Museum.