I finished Field Notes from a Catastrophe last night. It was, as I mentioned, about global warming. I'm pleased to report that I found numerous funny things in this book (even though I'm pretty sure that funny wasn't what the author was intending). For instance, there's a whole section about frog mating habits. She quotes a special frog scientist, who describes "writhing masses of toad balls." (p.81). Now that's hilarious to me, proving that I haven't really progressed much since middle school. There's also a funny section where the author (Kolbert) writes out her interview with Bush's Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs just after the Kyoto Protocol took effect. This section is funny in a Daily Show kind of way, where you're laughing out loud to mask how depressed you're becoming.
But the thing that I found most interesting about this book had nothing to do with global warming at all. Those of you who have talked with me recently know that I'm struggling with the work/life balance question. Can you have a job you love and also not be stressed out all the time? Is it possible to feel ambition and passion for your work life, but still be done by 3 pm every day to pick up your kids and do your scrapbook? This book raised an entirely new question for me. Has my decades-long struggle with the "what am I going to do with my life" issue been merely a lack of imagination about what is possible?
What I noticed as I was reading was how many weird careers there are out there. Here's an example. In a chapter about bugs, Kolbert describes G. Russell Coope, who is, apparently, "one of the world's leading authorities on ancient beetles" (p84). Huh. Beetles. I can't say I've ever given a thought to beetles (except the VW kind). I wonder if he announced to his preschool teacher when he was four years old that he was going to grow up and be a beetle expert. An ANCIENT beetle expert, no cheap contemporary knock-offs for this guy. Has he always known that beetles were IT for him? Then there's Kolbert's description of two evolutionary biologists who "have shared an interest in mosquitoes for as long as they have been interested in each other" (p.74). Sounds romantic! This couple cemented their marriage and their careers by "driving across the country in a van equipped with a makeshift bed for their daughter and a miniature lab for sorting, labeling, and storing the thousands of specimens they would gather" (p.78). They managed to find a way to navigate their professional and family lives, so why can't I?
When I think back to college, it seemed like choosing a career was like choosing a snack from a vending machine. The choices were all there for you to select, pre-packaged and ready to eat. You could major in economics and become someone who sells things or counts things. You could major in English and become an editor or a professor. You could major in theater and become a coffee barista. Et cetera. What I didn't acknowledge at the time was that I'm not so crazy about vending machine snacks, so it's not all that surprising that building a rewarding work life, in my case, has been a bit more complicated.
I know that others of you are dealing with these things, too (how many of you out there have several bachelor's degrees, or two master's degrees, or are trying to do your own thing by being self-employed? How many of you have built a career doing something you didn't mean to do? How many of you work part-time at three different jobs, or are waiting until "the kids get older" to answer these questions?). I'd love to hear what you think.
I'll end with a bit of wisdom I've learned from our neighborhood ice cream man. His name is Paris, and he has a frozen treat monopoly on the whole northeast side of the city. For three months, he drives around in a jeep, blaring his jingly-tinkly music, causing waves of kids to levitate out of the pool or the lake and run at break-neck speeds across busy streets and parking lots to buy 25 cent bomb pops for $3 a piece. Come September, he has enough money to travel for the remaining nine months of the year. Genius. Why didn't I think of that?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
I are a scientist, so I oughta at least answer the beetle question. There are more beetles than any other kind of animal, something like a quarter to a third of all species (and that's probably a lower limit, given their ability to lurk in a superior fashion when compared to more "charismatic" species). The quantitative biologist -- and noted Communistic atheist -- JBS Haldane said "the Creator, if He exists, has a special preference for beetles" in a lecture about life on other planets. This is often misquoted, and almost always used in inappropriate places, so I am delighted to have the rare opportunity to line up your beetle opening in the crosshairs and load my inarguably germane quote in the chamber. How often does an opening to talk about beetles come up in polite conversations? (I wonder if this is why scientists are generally rude.) Someone at the next soccer game sideline or (ha!) dinner party you go to may ask what you. Tell them you are a coleopterist, and if they persist, say you study beetles. Watch how high the eyebrows go. (It's a handy and reliable test for botox use.) Trust me, in that social situation you might as well put on a propeller beanie and just start eating paste.
Anyway.
Haldane also wrote very clearly, a glowing counterexample to the cliche (sadly true of your humble correspondent, tied up in knots by grant proposalese, an authoritative begging with just the right overtone of righteous-indignant whinge) that most science geeks can't write their way out of a paper bag. For your perusal I submit his essay On Being The Right Size:
http://www.physlink.com/Education/essay_haldane.cfm
Hmmm. If I were trying to get a quick B on my English homework, I'd jump in with the idea there may be a useful metaphor for your job/life search lurking (yes, twice in one post!) in that essay. I have an almost-retired colleague, a restless man, who copes by not keeping a job more than 7 years, no matter how well it's going. New challenges, no cage. Haldane certainly never stayed in one place. (For an A- on that English assignment, I woulda written "Haldane had a peripatetic intellectual life.")
If you decide to go for the job, go big; make sure your obituary describes you as "noted." No matter what, society will owe you more for your careful cultivation of Blue and Green. That's a whole other topic tho.
I'm not sure it is a whole different topic, though. Raising thoughtful, decent kids, to me, is part of the good life. So then balance, or integration, or something else, becomes important. Can a person be "noted" and also be balanced? Does being noted really matter ( I bet a lot of people secretly say "yes")?
Thank you for the beetle info! You crack me up. I should have expected that you would know something about that. How about frog mating? Any insights? :)
Sorry, my well of frog mating knowledge is dry. If I wish to make frogs appear, I use the
Random Frog Generator.
Ahem, yes, I have de-Joe'd. Lurking (!) students and all.
Computers are very often multi-threaded systems. That is to say, they are good at multi-tasking as each task is a thread the computer is working on. It makes the computer seem like it’s doing many things, such as running your word processor and checking email all at the same time.
This, of course, is a complete fabrication. A computer can only execute one statement (command) at a time. But it seems like multiple programs are running because the threads which run them are spliced together. That is to say, the computer allocates a certain amount of time for one task, switches to the other task for a certain amount of time, then back to the first. This is called time-slicing.
At its most basic form, time-slicing uses equal amounts of time for all threads. That is to say, thread one will receive 8 hours, then thread two will receive eight hours, then thread 3 will receive 8 hours, then back to thread one.
While this allows multiple tasks to be executed, it does increase the time needed to execute them. For example, if task A takes 10 hours to complete, and task B takes 4 hours, then task A will now take 14 hours to complete given a time slice of 8 hours (8 hours for the first time slice, 4 hours for task B, and another 2 to finish up.)
In a priority based time-slice, different threads are given priorities which rate them relative to one another. For instance, the computer could have a priority rating of 1 (most important) to 10 (least important). Higher priority threads are executed before lower priority threads in this type of system. Also, higher priority threads may be given more time to execute than lower priority threads (10 hours for the higher priority versus 6 for the lower priority).
Such a multi-threaded system allows for performing multiple tasks, but it is the programmer of the system that must ultimately determine the initial priorities for each thread.
Boring? Yeah, probably, though I found it interesting when I was first studying it. Anyway, I tried to find a non-technical way of writing what I was thinking but I wasn’t happy with any of them, mostly because it involves saying something like ‘When you balance your time between passions (and I am counting work as a passion), there is always going to be give-and-take and countless compromises.’ The compromise for raising decent, intelligent kids is that you don’t have as much time to devote to your progress at work. Consequently, it will take longer, or you will have to shoot for less ‘notable’ accomplishments.
Not that less notable means less important. There was a time where I wanted to be a noted musician and change the world. And there was a time where I wanted to be a noted writer and change the world. And I still every now and then day-dream about some fantastic discovery in computer science or software engineering that may change the world. But, if at the end of my life the people I know and respect say ‘I know him. He was a good man. He touched me.’ Then I will have considered my life good and un-wasted.
(sorry so long. :( )
p.s. heh, heh... toad balls.
Hey, Pete! Thanks for leaving a comment. You've turned into a true techie, my friend. When I think of you, I still imagine you playing a synthesizer.
Joey, I have to ask, did you already know about the random frog generator, or did you go searching for it?
Well, I had to go looking for the link. I'd seen it before when hunting for more info on 2005 IgNobel prize won recently by some fellows who showed that frogs have different smells depending on their moods.
(Here is the official citation: BIOLOGY: Benjamin Smith of the University of Adelaide, Australia and the University of Toronto, Canada and the Firmenich perfume company, Geneva, Switzerland, and ChemComm Enterprises, Archamps, France; Craig Williams of James Cook University and the University of South Australia; Michael Tyler of the University of Adelaide; Brian Williams of the University of Adelaide; and Yoji Hayasaka of the Australian Wine Research Institute; for painstakingly smelling and cataloging the peculiar odors produced by 131 different species of frogs when the frogs were feeling stressed.
REFERENCE: "A Survey of Frog Odorous Secretions, Their Possible Functions and Phylogenetic Significance," Benjamin P.C. Smith, Craig R. Williams, Michael J. Tyler, and Brian D. Williams, Applied Herpetology, vol. 2, no. 1-2, February 1, 2004, pp. 47-82.)
Science is deeply weird.
I was pleased with, and therefore remembered, the Random Frog Generator, not only for the excellent name, but because it seemed like an echo of an idea that frogs are spontaneously generated from mud after a rain. Yes, the idea that dirt, wet or dry, could create a live being ("for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return"), is at least as old as the more important Greeks, and was only recently (15 decades is nothing) vacated by an uppity French chemist. It seems perfectly sensible, and people believed it forever, but that doesn't make it any less wrong.
I think we share a liking for a good solid phrase of 3-5 words. What makes something like the Exploding Plastic Inevitable so memorable?
And if not:
wikipedia saves the day
By the way, the "notable" comment I made before has a much more catholic (small c) intention than it may have seemed. One must do something different, not necessarily good, useful, or important, e.g., "her impromptu street performances were notable for their use of hairpieces snatched from unfortunate passersby." Being memorable is usually amusing, and it's a nice gift for those left behind. But exploits and even our genetic contributions to the future are always emphemeral-- even the lasting work of Gutzon Borglum (a sculptor who designed Mount Rushmore, and no I didn't look that up, who could forget such an exquisite name?) ends when the sun explodes. If you're not doing any harm, you might as well amuse yourself and those around you while the party lasts.
I can't recover by Google a story I read about some researchers who cloned bacteria with messages spelled (spelt?) in their DNA. Their idea was to release them to the wild, in the hope some future (and apparently rather bored) person would recover the message in the sequence. Apart from normal genetic drift blurring the message, the idea was that it would outlast any other mode of communicating with our heirs. (How many people don't even know the names of their great-great grandparents?)
Post a Comment