This post contains sexism. And math.

I told you about Russian. But unfortunately, for all of its tongue-twisting words and incomprehensible grammar (I may have complained about this already, but three genders, Russian? Really?) Russian is not the reason my brain's been taking a pounding recently.

You see, I'm also in what my university jokingly refers to as Calculus. I'm not sure why it refers to this as Calculus, because any connection between this and what, in my experience, is generally called calculus is purely coincidental.

The difference, for those math-y enough to care:
Real Calculus Step 1: Learn about limits as tangent lines.
"Calculus" Step 1: Learn about limits in terms of epsilon and delta.
RC 2: Learn about derivatives.
"Calculus" 2: Learn about limits in terms of epsilon and delta.
RC 3: Use derivatives to figure out minimums and maximums.
"Calculus" 3: Learn about minimums and maximums in terms of limits in terms of epsilon and delta.

Etc.

Some relevant background: I don't like to prove things. It's kind of offensive, for one thing. Hello, I said it, and I'm awesome - why is that not enough for you?

Secondly, it's never enough that it makes sense, you have to say everything in math-speak. "You can tell it goes to infinity because when x gets close to the limit the numbers get really big. Like, super big" <-- this will earn you a -50 on any homework assignment.

This "calculus" course is just proving things (or attempting to, anyway). Over, and over, and over. It's like the brain equivalent of someone poking you really hard until you say "uncle" (and then prove it for any real epsilon greater than zero, by finding that for any such epsilon there exists a delta such that aaaaaahhhhhhhhh).

I see this semester ending one of three ways:

********

"But where is the sexism, Alirsnan?" none of you are thinking right now. "You promised us sexism!"

My recent math experiences have led me to formulate a new theory about why there are relatively few women in math and computer science (it's a sexist theory, of course - it would almost have to be). It goes as follows:

1. Math and computer science people are often stereotyped as nerds with poor social skills.

2. This is, shall we say, not always completely inaccurate (present company excluded! unless your social skills are so bad that you didn't realize that what I'm saying could be construed as an insult).

3. After years of intense math training (I'll refer to only math from here on out, but comp sci is included), math TAs forget that there existed a time that they didn't intuitively understand this stuff.

4. Based on points 2 and 3, we can guess that math TAs are somewhat less sympathetic than others when it comes to helping students who are struggling (my small-scale "research" bears this out). As in, raise some outlandish theory in sociology class and the teacher will say, "Hmmm. That's very interesting. I don't think there have been any studies indicating that, but it's an interesting idea," mix up theory 111.3 and theory 111.4 in calculus class and the teacher will look at you like he's afraid that breathing the same air as you might be making him dumber.

5. Women tend to internalize bad feelings, men tend to externalize them. As in, women tend to think, "I got it wrong. This is so embarrassing. I'm so bad at math. I don't know why I thought this was a good idea." Men tend to think, "Huh. This TA is a jerk. I was probably right, too. He just doesn't know what he's talking about."

6. The result of 4 and 5: women leave hard math classes with snobby TAs feeling stupid, men leave feeling the TAs are stupid - and by the second year, you get a significant gender imbalance.

In other words, if I, as a woman, successfully complete a math degree, a large chunk of the credit will be due not to my (non existent) study skills or (suspiciously difficult to prove) superior intellect, but rather, to my arrogance. See, mom and dad, it's a good thing that I know I'm always right about everything.

Now if someone can just prove this theory for any epsilon greater than zero, we'll be all set.

Progress

Remember a few months ago, when I mentioned my limited Russian skills?

A reminder: this is how it used to sound to me when people talked to me in Russian.

I am pleased to announce that after months of hard work and (semi) daily flashcard review, I can now not only understand some of what people say to me, but even respond! It goes something like this:

There may be some room for improvement.

But still - progress!

I also read Goldilocks and the Three Bears in Russian. I hate to be a language snob, but I have to say, the story is much better in Russian.

For one thing, the bears have names, and their relationship to each other is never quite clarified, which automatically makes it more interesting. They could be single roommates, hanging out and having fun in the bear equivalent of the big city. Or in some weird love triangle. Who knows.

Also open to interpretation is the substance they had cooling in their bowls when Goldilocks traipsed in. I looked up the word in multiple online dictionaries with no luck. Now I don't even want to know anymore, because the possibilities beyond "porridge" (did Goldilocks bust a bear-operated meth ring? were they preparing deadly chemicals for the first wave of attack on the filthy humans?) make the story so much better.

So that's how Russian is going. Math, now... let's not talk about math for today. 

Sick days

Viggy has been sick. That's my excuse for not updating this blog last week, falling behind in math, falling behind in Russian, the messy bedroom, and a few other things I haven't thought of yet.

He's doing better, but for a while he was really out of it. I, of course, did my best to be a good and supportive wife. Unfortunately for Viggy, my best isn't all that great when it comes to supportive.

Fortunately, after a few days of rest and lots of medicine he's doing better. He was still home today, including during the early afternoon when four of the girls' friends came over.

I think he'll be doing any further recuperation in the office.

********

I've been considering a daily feature that would serve as a warning to prospective parents with no need for creativity on my part. It would be called "Why are we crying today," and would be only explanations I heard in the last 24 hours for heartbroken sobbing.

Here are four from this afternoon:

- Because Daddy opened the front door, and I wanted to be the one to open the front door.

- Because Daddy put ketchup on my plate when I asked him to, but it was only a little bit of ketchup and I wanted a lot of ketchup.

- Because I fell on my knee and it hurt - two hours ago.

- Because my best friend is leaving and I won't see her until tomorrow morning, which is like five whole waking hours away. 

Maybe this does deserve its own Consider Yourself Warned, under D for Drama. But in the meantime, I'll be working on my next set of book reviews - unless the delightful miss SNAN inspires me to write about her again.

War, hot chocolate, etc

Last week Adi realized the situation was not usual, so I decided to try to explain a bit of what was going on.

Me: There are some bad people who want to hurt people. So they're trying to throw bombs at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and lots of cities. But there are soldiers working on stopping them by bombing their bombs so they can't hurt anyone.
Adi (wide-eyed): That must make a HUGE explosion.
Me: Yes. Yes, it does.

That was her entire reaction until the next day, when she suggested that we invite everyone we know who lives south of us (I'll spare you all the list...) to come stay at our house.

******

A random conversation over lunch:

N's Friend: N, how many teeth does baby S have?
N: Ummm.... four?
Me: She has four on top and three below. Do you know how many that is?
N: *starts counting on fingers*
N's Friend: Seven!
Me: That's right, seven.
N's Friend: And I didn't count. Not even in my head.
Me: How did you figure out the answer without counting?
N's Friend: God told me.
N's Friend: God tells everybody everything, but sometimes we forget.


******

Sunday night I offered to make hot chocolate for dessert.

This offer was met with considerable enthusiasm.

The girls were very interested in how hot chocolate is made

and even managed to help a bit with the preparation.

In the end, it wasn't the tastiest thing ever to be deceptively called "hot chocolate," but the kids didn't care. They had a beverage referred to as hot chocolate, just like Dora in that story of hers (it's only like their sixth favorite Dora story, so I've only read it about 400 times).

Sometimes the eating experience is half the fun.

Totally prepared

I meant to post earlier, but I got distracted what with the war and all.

Being where I am, we haven't had to run for shelter, which is good, because one of the laws of going anywhere with young children is that the more children you're traveling with, the slower you go, until at some point you're actually traveling backward. Which would make it hard to reach the bomb shelter in time.

So my main source of stress, beyond worry for everyone I know (including those of you on the east coast of the USA - what if there are more freaky stray tornadoes??) has been reading the foreign media. Which is basically:

title: DEAD PALESTINIAN BABY

subtitle: Parents wail in anguish over the body of their child, killed in an Israeli airstrike.

article: Israel continued its aggressive retaliation Saturday... blah blah blah.

Which sounds pretty anti-Israel, until you get to the comments, which make it look positively Kahanist.

Not that I'm bitter. Not that I think they're complete hypocrites who would expect Israel's support in face of 1/10th the aggression Hamas has displayed. Not that I think all of the reporters who wrote the last 15 articles I read have the collective IQ of a squid that was somehow, in defiance of the laws of physics, dropped on its head many times as a baby.

Anyway. All this state-of-emergency-ness has me thinking about our emergency preparation. So far we have stocked up:

- A six-pack of water, which, in case of emergency, I will presumably remain incapable of carrying for more than three feet without dropping, immediately tripping over, and then cursing.

- A four-pack of tuna,which makes me sad not because of how it symbolizes the fear of war that is perpetually lurking in the background and the inevitable need for my children to be exposed to the cruel reality that there are people - a lot of people - who would love nothing more than to destroy all of us, but because holy crap, tuna cost just 18 shekels when I bought that. That was, what, three months ago? And now it's like 24 shekels! What the heck happened? I miss tuna.

I did hear that they might lower the VAT on tuna, so at least there's that.

- Crackers. Because why not?

- Matches. Which, in case of emergency, I will leave untouched. There's no emergency so bad that me with a pack of working matches can't somehow make it worse.

That's pretty much it. Unfortunately, it won't help with my main concern, which is shoes. It takes us 30 minutes to get everyone in shoes on a good day. On a bad day, I imagine everyone else would be evacuated, housed for several weeks in a facility in a different part of the country, and returned before we would all have appropriate footwear.

I though of taking the shoes we can most easily do without and putting them in a pack somewhere. Unfortunately, aside from the fact that sparkley pink slippers are probably not the most practical footwear for a war zone (/post-earthquake pandemonium/ zombie apocalypse), there's also the issue that I don't recall ever, in all of my (nearly 30!) years of existence, remembering where the totally smart place that I put that thing so that I would be sure to remember where I put it later was.

Oh well. My shoe dilemma will remain for the time being, and will give me something to puzzle out in between inviting friends from Tel Aviv to come visit (they won't come. all that yoga keeps them calm even under rocket fire. Tel Avivians, what can you do) and cursing out the BBC (and AP. Jerusalem is Israel's "self declared" capital? What exactly makes a city a capital other than the leadership of that country declaring it to be so? Did we miss the capital fairy coming to dust it with her magic pixie dust? Please clarify, AP).

For Zeidie

A conversation for Zeidie:

Adi: Are we having crembos for dessert?
Me: No.
Adi: Oooooooooooofffff (readers: imagine the dramatic groan of a person in serious pain.)
Me: We'll have crembos for dessert on Shabbat.
Adi: Why, is Zeidie coming for Shabbat?!!!
Me: No. We'll buy our own.
Adi: *mind is blown*


And now an aside to my parents:
Let's talk business here. How much are you willing to pay for this list not to be forwarded to SNAN?

Consider Yourself Warned - A - Avoidance

So here's a cool thing about parenting: it gives you a form of super senses. The lamest possible form, but still.

You can see tiny dangerous objects on the floor from a distance of at least 20 feet.
You can hear a snack bag rustling softly from two rooms away.
You can feel that the room is 0.1 degrees too cold for your baby (may apply only to women).
You can smell... let's not get into what you'll be smelling.

So your baby is born, and you get all these special abilities.

And then spend the next 18 years pretending not to have them.

See, when parenting in a duo, it doesn't usually pay to be the first to notice the problem. This is one of the unwritten Rules of Parenting in play - whoever hears the screeching first is supposed to deal with it. It's like the grown-up version of "he who smelt it, dealt it." (Which is why you will often see otherwise perfectly intelligent and observant adults turn into silent lumps the minute they hear a voice saying "I'm thiiiiirsty.")

Even when you're alone with the terrifying creatures adorable children it's sometimes better to just develop selective hearing and see if by some miracle things resolve themselves without you rather than to go in and do all the scolding and mopping that would be necessary if you *knew* knew what they were up to.

This may sound like the most juvenile attempt at problem avoidance ever. It is, but it's also surprisingly effective. I could honestly classify this as a "tip" nearly as easily as a warning.

So my advice to my fellow parents, and parents-to-be: use your super-vision to get all the dangerous junk off the floor, then turn your senses to a higher purpose (like enjoying the subtle variances of shade along the back of your eyelids) and let the kids do their kid thing. If there's a real problem, it's unlikely you'll need super-senses to detect it.

Alirsnan Goes to School

Yesterday I did something I haven't done in a very, very long time - I attended a lecture.

I've taken several courses in the past few years, but I haven't actually gone in person to listen to teachers lecture for a while. Technically it's not required with the program I'm in, but it's supposed to be helpful.

So since I'm all about "helpful" I decided to go check it out. 5:45 saw me heading out the door for class. The rest of the evening went roughly as follows:

5:50 p.m.: Yay!! The bus! Wait, was I supposed to take this one? Crap! Viggy just told me this!

5:51 p.m.: Oh no wait, there's the right bus. Yay!!

6:00 p.m.: I probably should have asked Viggy where I get off the bus, too.

6:20 p.m.: I'm only 20 minutes late. That's not so bad.

6:22 p.m.: Wow, so many classrooms. I probably should have figured this part out in advance, too.

6:25 p.m.: My stomach always feels all twitchy in these situations. Maybe I'm actually allergic to school?

6:30 p.m.: Only half an hour late. That's not so bad. I'll just sneak in quietly between these chairs. Good thing there was an open seat in back.

6:40 p.m.: It's a good thing I came! I didn't get to any of this in the reading yet. He's explaining it well, too.

6:42 p.m.: No pen??? Auugggghhh. And the emergency backup pen Viggy snuck into my bag doesn't work, either. This is all his fault.

6:45 p.m.: The teacher just said that problem he just reviewed was like the first problem in the homework set. But he's explaining the connection between continuity and derivatives, and the homework is about limits.

....

*light goes on over Alirsnan's head*

Whoops.

6:47 p.m.: Wait, am I in the wrong classroom, or have I been learning the wrong material and doing the wrong homework? It could so easily be either.

6:55 p.m.: Wrong classroom.

7:30 p.m. (break time): Who the heck names one course Calculus I and the other one Calculus A? Anyone could get confused by that. Anyone at all.

7:45 p.m.: This class is a lot smaller. It might be kind of hard to pretend I've been here the whole time.

7:47 p.m.: Make that "impossible."

7:50 p.m.: My real teacher is scary.

9:05 p.m.: If I run, I can still catch the bus. I see at the stop right now.

9:06 p.m.: Trying to run hurts. That doesn't seem fair somehow.

9:30 p.m.: If only I'd caught the stupid bus, I'd already be at home doing productive stuff like cleaning and finishing the homework. Instead I'm just standing here doing nothing.

10:10 p.m.: *ignores messy house and incomplete homework in favor of watching old episodes of House*

Reading list

For the past few years I’ve had a lot more recommendations for good books to read than actual time to read good books. People (by “people,” I mean of course “my dad”) have recommended books like The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, She, A Civil Action, and more titles that I can’t remember at the moment but definitely have floating around in my brain somewhere, because I was totally listening at the time.

Recently I finally found some time to sit and read books. So, naturally, I didn’t read any of the above books.

What I did read were the following: A Storm of Swords and Vampire Diaries, once each, and Curious George Goes to a Chocolate Factory and Goodnight Moon (way, way more than once each).

And now, for your convenience, I will review them all for you here.

A Storm of Swords (Fantasy)

This is book three of the Song of Ice and Fire series by George Martin. It’s a fantasy novel, but the focus is on political intrigue and war more than on the occasional warlock or dragon.

The best and worst thing about the series so far is that there’s no apparent direction to the story. On the one hand, it’s great: finally, there’s a popular fantasy series where you really don’t know what’s going to happen. As soon as you start thinking “oh, now I get it, this second guy is going to defeat those other guys and become king,” Second Guy is brutally murdered by some new character and the plot rolls onward. And it’s genuinely surprising.

The downside of that is that after a while, it starts to get suspiciously, tediously familiar. Wait a second – a story about a bunch of would-be royalty who spend their time plotting together, betraying each other, waging war, killing people in various horrific ways, and drinking? That’s starting to sound an awful lot like history.

Could A Song of Ice and Fire be trying to make me learn something?

Damn it, George Martin. You wasted more than 2,000 pages of my life on useful information.

Curious George Goes to a Chocolate Factory (Non-fiction)

This book is a disturbing expose of the lax health standards at our nation’s chocolate factories. I don’t want to give away too much of the plot, but the intrepid yellow-hatted journalist manages to get a monkey carrying lord-only-knows-what diseases right onto the production line. And the workers not only don’t evict the animal immediately, or at least insist it wear gloves while touching the chocolate, they offer it prizes.

A must-read for chocolate lovers, and for anyone who wants Dani not to pitch a temper tantrum.

Vampire Diaries Part 1 (Paranormal Romance. Yes, that’s its own category now. I know. I feel your pain.)

This may be a book about a random, boring teenage girl in a small town who falls for a mysterious handsome guy who pretends not to like her back but it turns out that’s only because he cares for her so much, and oh yeah, he’s also a vampire – but it’s not Twilight.

There are several differences between this book and Twilight. For example, in Twilight the hot vampire rescues the personality-lacking heroine first from a boy named Tyler who almost hits her with his car and then from would-be rapists, but in Vampire Diaries that’s condensed into him saving her from a boy named Tyler who wants to rape her.

Also, while Twilight centers on a love triangle between a girl with no thoughts, hopes or emotions that don’t relate directly to the hero, a hot, never-aging vampire boy with eyes that change color and the ability to read minds who eats only animal blood, and a werewolf who is madly in love with a baby in a right-lets-all-pretend-that’s-not-incredibly-creepy kind of way, Vampire Diaries centers on a love triangle between a girl with no thoughts, hopes or emotions that don’t relate directly to the hero, a hot, never-aging vampire boy with eyes that change color and the ability to read minds who eats only animal blood, and a second vampire who is the first vampire’s brother and who doubles as one of the villains of the story.

I admit that there were a few small similarities that made me a bit suspicious that Vampire Diaries might have been inspired by Twilight. But when I checked the inside cover of Vampire Diaries, I saw it was written in the early 90s, meaning the author has the distinction of being the first (out of her and Stephanie Meyer, anyway) to imagine vampires as creatures who - being blessed with superhuman strength, eternal life, eternal youth, and superpowers – would naturally choose to spend their time hanging out in high school picking up teenage girls.

Disturbingly, they’re probably both onto something.

Anyway, while Vampire Diaries isn’t exactly Twilight, there was one part that was exactly the same: my sense of shame upon completing the book. (like realizing that all your one-last-bites of ice cream have added up to half the container, not that I'd know what that's like.)

Goodnight Moon (How-To Guide)

At first, Goodnight Moon looks like nothing more than a whimsical children’s book. But if you’ve actually lived through the scenario it depicts, you realize it’s nothing less than a torture manual.

Disturbingly, this book is not only being sold openly in stores, but is being marketed directly to those most likely to put it into use.

I recommend reading this, but only so that you’ll know what you’re up against. 

Vitamins

I went to get vitamins today. Actually, I went to get lice-killing shampoo (I forgot that winter has bugs, too - but why are the lice allowed to return before the cockroaches all die? why???) and got vitamins too.

It reminded me of a conversation I had with one child a few weeks ago, when we ran out of vitamins:

Child (sadly): It's all my fault the vitamins are gone.
Me: Aww, sweetie, it's not your fault. Everyone had some vitamins and now they're gone. That's what happens, when you eat it it's not there anymore.
Child (still sad): But it was my fault.
Me: Everybody ate some, not just you. And anyway, we'll get more.
Child: But I'm the one who did it.
Me: Why do you think it's your fault?
Child: Because in the mornings I sneak the bottle off the shelf and take an extra one.


The bottle is now well out of reach (I hope - I thought the last one was, too) so hopefully nobody will be getting extra-vitamin poisoning or whatever it is that happens when you eat too many of those things.