Category: Mutterings

Just the Stats, Please

Yes, I’m still here.  Sort of.  I’ve been so busy since the first of the year, I just now came up for air, and only because I realized it had been nearly a month since I’d posted to my blog.  A new year at work means a new budget cycle and all the projects that were on hold now have been given the green light and of course should have been completed yesterday.  The ringing in my ears can be directly correlated to the number of hours per day I spend on conference calls.  I spend so much time in fact on conference calls that the only time I have to accomplish actual work is at home during the evenings.

And for some reason, I thought it was a good idea, to take another online course, this time in Statistics.  I needed one more course to finish my Associates Degree and I wanted to do something related to my core goal – Mathematics.  Ironically, as I learned while reading and studying the first chapter of my textbook, Statistics is not technically considered a course in Mathematics.  Math results in one right answer if you solve the problem correctly – and this is repeatable for anyone anytime.  One problem = one right answer.  This is not the case for Statistics.

For my commutes to and from work I switched from listening to audiobooks (for now) to following various podcasts as a sort of New Year’s resolution.  Some of them are audio dramas, some of them are non-fiction, some are current tech news, some are short fiction (mostly fantasy and science fiction from various magazines) and some are just pure fun.  Most of them I can complete in one day (two commutes = approximately 90 minutes) so I don’t have to worry about losing my place or losing track of the story in a long audiobook.

To prepare for last night’s Tolkien Society of Kansas City discussion of The Children of Hurin, I listened to nearly seven hours of amazing depth and insight on Chapter 21 of the Silmarillion thanks to the trilogy of episodes broadcast by the Prancing Pony Podcast.  I plan a more in-depth post on my tumble down Tolkien’s tragic Turin tale.  Our next group read at TSoKC is Unfinished Tales, but thankfully we’re skipping Part One (which would be yet another reading of Turin), but will start with Part Two and also read Letters 50-89 in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Check our Facebook page for the date of our next meeting in February and join us if you’re so inclined.  All are welcome.

This weekend will be all too short between obligatory after-hours work (ah, the joys of information technology support and maintenance), volunteering at the library (now that is pure joy) and tonight’s General Meeting of the Astronomical Society of Kansas City.

It’s the 27th day of January, 2018.  I’ve flown through 7.4 percent of the year in days, nearly 8.3 percent of the months and 11 percent of the first quarter.

Tepus fugit.  Vita brevis.

Merry Bowlingmas

Welcome to my annual roasting of my building’s attempts at modern art holiday decorating.  When I showed my husband this year’s photo, his first words were: “Bowling pins?”

20171127_160137
unHoliday Lobby Decorations (2017)

I had to concede his point.  At least this year the dominant color is red with a swash of green.

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The Slow Burn May Be Heating Up

Modesitt is preaching to my choir again:

… minorities, women, and others affected by the history and legacy of racial and gender discrimination. They’re tired of endlessly waiting for equality, and with ethnic, racial, and gender discrimination continuing, those feeling that discrimination is continuing are also getting angrier and angrier.

The Anger Problem, published 7/25/2017 http://www.lemodesittjr.com/2017/07/25/the-anger-problem/

Also read this morning, and a blog post I also commented upon:

If we had maximum democracy every registered voter would vote on every bill without using representatives. Since we have a representative democracy, our elected proxies should vote the way we want. Often, this doesn’t happen because they work for a minority rather than the majority. This is called an oligarchy, and since our oligarchs are rich, we call our form of oligarchy a plutocracy. I guess that’s fancier label than Rule by Billionaires.

We Need More Democracy

I’m just all kinds of warm and fuzzy today but I blame that on the hot humid Kansas summer.

Tenacious Dedication

I feel nostalgically melancholy today.  I am remembering a time, about a decade ago, when I seethed with frustration surrounding a disappointing rejection my daughter suffered through.  When I requested an explanation for the rejection, the response I received  accused my daughter of “not being dedicated enough.”  In my mind, “not dedicated enough” became “not rich enough” because the evidence supporting that theory appeared overwhelming.  Other more affluent students with less talent and training achieved admittance, while my daughter was passed over.

Across the intervening years, I’ve watched and listened to my daughter devote countless hours in vocal training and coaching, music studies, daily practicing, auditions, rehearsals and performances.  Her perseverance, tenacity and, yes, dedication, knows no bounds. Her vocal coach is amazed out how extraordinarily large my daughter’s voice is, the largest she has heard.  I weep with pride, joy and love when I get a chance to hear her perform.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vism9va0CBk]

She recently performed the Contralto solo in several performances of Handel’s Messiah.  My only regret is I couldn’t afford to fly to Seattle to listen to it live.

Next week, my daughter flies to New York for her last audition of the year.  To date, she’s flown over 20,000 miles this year for auditions, all across the Continental United States:  from San Francisco, to Chicago, to Houston, to Chicago again, to New York, etc. etc.

Where are these other ‘more dedicated’ students now? Personally, I could care less.

Break a leg next week Rachelle!

The Death of Free-Range Parenting

Fascinating article I read this morning thanks to NPR’s feed:

Why Do We Judge Parents For Putting Kids at Perceived – But Unreal – Risk?

I’ve seen this materialize with my own eyes of the last 30-40 years.  I became a mother in the mid-80s.  Yet I spent most of the 70s riding my bicycle miles away from home during the summer.  As a parent, I tried not to freak out too much when my kids turned Houdini on me, but this study is right about this being classist (punishing poor single parents – mostly mothers), sexist (less moral outrage when a father leaves kids alone to work instead of inferring the woman abandons her kids to work outside the home) and the ever increasing worry about legal liability (by parents, by teachers, by coaches, by schools, by stores, etc.).

Some noteable quotes from the article:

The people with presumably the most child care experience (mothers) actually expressed the most exaggerated overestimates of risk. I was genuinely surprised by that. But I guess that’s because I was expecting people to be rational, and people are just not rational about this subject.

***

For parents who are working, who have more than one child, who need to get something else done during the day — to say nothing of single parents — that model of parenting is absurd.

***

It seems to be socially acceptable to harass parents (particularly mothers) who are “caught” leaving their child unattended for any time at all. . . . These guys are so proud of their behavior that they post the whole thing on Facebook, bragging about how they put these women in their place. It’s like “catching” parents breaking this new rule gives strangers license to harass them. I would be happy if this study prompted people to think about that, and if people moved away from this mentality of “punishing the bad mommy.”

***

So … don’t be so judgy when you know your judgments are being influenced by things besides actual evidence, don’t allow those same judgments to determine criminal standards of negligence or endangerment, and parents who judge that they can safely leave their children alone in a given situation shouldn’t feel guilty about doing so just because they know that decision would be (irrationally) condemned by others.

***

I think people still (unfortunately) believe, explicitly or implicitly, that when a father leaves home to do paid work, he is taking care of his child by doing that. Whereas when a mother does the same thing, she is seen as abandoning her child to pursue her own interests. The mother’s paid work is seen as morally objectionable and thus as endangering the child, whereas the father’s paid work is not.

D.W.M.

The Misogyny Card – http://www.lemodesittjr.com/2016/09/13/the-misogyny-card/

My husband and I have been arguing about presidential candidate voting most of this week.  I will not burden you with the details as I find it rude to discuss religion and politics in public. I can’t wait for this torture, I mean election season, to be over.

I found Modesitt’s blog post today struck a nerve. And I recently heard him in person declaring what I already knew to be true: that nearly all political campaigning and maneuvering is based on fear.  

Food for thought.

Another Take on Income Inequality — L.E. Modesitt, Jr.

I can always count on Mr. Modesitt for my morning refresher course in human nature. Eight thousand years of repeating ourselves. You’d think we’d learn.

Sometime around 7500 B.C., people began building clustered mud-brick houses at Catalhoyuk, Turkey. According to detailed archeological studies, for roughly the next thousand years, the same patterns of life persisted, apparently with all families living in the same fashion and with approximately the same level of goods and the same size houses. Analyses of the…

via Another Take on Income Inequality — L.E. Modesitt, Jr. – The Official Website

The Majority of Americans Can’t See the Milky Way Anymore

http://gizmodo.com/the-majority-of-americans-cant-see-the-milky-way-anymor-1781756700?utm_campaign=socialflow_gizmodo_twitter&utm_source=gizmodo_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow

http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/06/pawnee-sky/486557/

Light pollution update.  Not looking good for looking up for 80% of us in the United States.

So Your Home Printer Just Ran Out of Ink . . .

Home printing and printers are the bane of my existence.  I’m very spoiled.  My employer is a large law firm.  Law firms excel at killing trees (i.e. printing reams and reams and reams of paper).  I’ve had access to exceptional printers (actually the modern-day term is ‘multi-function device’ or MFD for short) for decades.  Of course, the flip side to this is I hate printed materials.  I don’t want to store them, file them, fold them, dust them, move them, etc.  You can’t search for a printed item like you can an electronic copy.  So a piece of paper is of no use to me whatsoever.  My husband, however, is not so enlightened.  Neither are most of my relatives, none of whom have followed me into the realm of paperless nirvana.

Continue reading “So Your Home Printer Just Ran Out of Ink . . .”