suzanne

Things I didn't realize we're going to become bedtime stories until I became a Mama. (An ongoing list)

* the nativity story

* the time I broke my elbow and Theresa took me to the hospital accompanied by a very young Morgan.

* driving home from college one day in the snow and getting the car stuck in a ditch. And how Papa Brooks and our brothers used the Bronco to pull me out.

*Mary and Joseph's flight to Egypt with a young Jesus (I decided that Jesus didn't like riding camels and complained the whole way. I will be annoyed if this keeps me out of heaven.)

* Driving accross country on my honeymoon, stopping to see random things (Morgan seems perplexed by the Corn Palace) and the van breaking down.

I always underestimate how tired I get during this conference. The scientists continue to be amusing, but over the past couple days I've been going to some pretty heavy and intense panels that didn't include many laughs. But I found you a few chuckles.

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It's AAAS weekend, which means I'm posting my traditional "scientists are funny" posts.

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It's a busy day at Annual Reviews - here are copies of some of my notes.

Posted AR-Psych 66 this morning - If I were forced to pick a favorite it would have to be Smallwood's "Science of Mind Wandering: Empirically Navigating the Stream of Consciousness." Apparently there has been an increase in research about mind wandering, and the article also discusses the related idea of mindfulness which is more often found in meditation techniques. I've seen a couple articles recently about education research in the effects of teaching mindfulness meditation to young children in school to help teach them how to focus. (Which I think is awesome.) I like the explanation here: "When the mind wanders, attention drifts from its current train of thought (often an external task) to mental content generated by the individual rather than cued by the environment. Often the thoughts that occur during mind-wandering experiences are described as task unrelated...."

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I'm also very fond of this one: "Perspectives on Culture and Concepts" gave me some of my favorite new words. I've already used them in conversations about science fiction.: Folkbiology, Folkpsychology, and Folkphysics. I specifically am fond of folkphysics, which was very helpful in a recent comic book discussion. Folkphysics is the "intuitive or everyday understanding of physical events, bounded objects, and substances." These ideas are important to the article because of the way different cultures understand physical (biological or psychological) events. It's a marvelous article.

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Marine 7 also posted today. I've seen many documentaries about the ecosystems around sunken shipwrecks, and I've seen the stories about ships (and other large objects) being purposefully sunk to provide habitats. But this volume includes an article about the ecosystems that occur around dead whales , or as they call it in the article "whale-fall." "Whale-Fall Ecosystems: Recent Insights into Ecology, Paleoecology, and Evolution" by Smith et al. I was surprised to hear how long this research has been going on: " The fate of sunken whale carcasses has been the subject of scientific speculation for at least 80 years, and hints that whale falls harbor an unusual fauna first appeared in the taxonomic literature more than 150 years ago. Nonetheless, whale-fall ecosystems were not recognized until the discovery in 1987 of a chemolithoautotrophic assemblage on a balaenopterid skeleton in the deep sea off California, which unexpectedly resembled the recently discovered communities at hydrothermal vents and cold seeps..." Very nifty.

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Also there is an article about Fjords! Straneo's "The Dynamics of Greenland's Glacial Fjords and Their Role in Climate." I didn't point this out simply because I wanted an excuse to mutter "fjord, fjord, fjord" under my breath. I haven't read this one completely yet, but climate change has change the way scientists look at the fjords, " Rapid mass loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet has sparked interest in its glacial fjords for two main reasons: Increased submarine melting of glaciers terminating in fjords is a plausible trigger for glacier retreat, and the anomalous freshwater discharged from Greenland is transformed by fjord processes before being released into the large-scale ocean." (fjord, fjord, fjord.)

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And finally - AR Fluid. I've been waiting to talk about Clanet's "Sports Ballistics." for a long time, so I'm going to jump right in. I think the best way to start is to simply give you the abstract: " This review describes and classifies the trajectories of sports projectiles that have spherical symmetry, cylindrical symmetry, or (almost) no symmetry. This classification allows us to discuss the large diversity observed in the paths of spherical balls, the flip properties of shuttlecocks, and the optimal position and stability of ski jumpers." The first figure has pictures of a soccer ball, a shuttlecock, and a ski jumper. It's a great article looking at how these objects move through the air. I was impressed by the introduction which points out that the tradition of physics looking at sports equipment is a long and noble one, including a quote from Newton in 1671 about tennis balls.

Cross-posted to 4th_st_Fantasy.

The not-so-long-awaited 2014 Fourth Street book list is now up. But before you click on the link please skim over my notes and requests.

1. There seems to have been some confusion over whether or not I was keeping a book list this year. I was, but when I heard about the list on the white-board I also got confused and didn't arrange for coverage for panels I had to miss.

2. I was providing child-car for my daughter during two of the panels ("Originality and Micro-genre" and "Influence, Tropes, and Prior Art.") If you happened to note any books mentioned during those panels, or if you have a picture of the whiteboard please let me know about them and I'll happily add them to the list.

3. There were 8 books that showed up on the board in between panels and I'm not 100% sure where they belong. If you know for sure let me know so I can file them correctly. Mystery Solved!

4. There were a couple of books that I either couldn't decipher fully from my notes, or couldn't find the right book. Please help me fill in the blanks! ( missing informationCollapse )

5. I want to try something different this year. I have a section on the page called "Books that should have been mentioned but weren't." Were you sitting there trying to remember the title/author during a panel but couldn't quite bring it to mind? Did you only think of the perfect book on the plane home? Let me know and I'll add it to the list.

https://sites.google.com/site/4thstreet2014/

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Mark your calendars! Fourth Street 2015 - June 26-28!

Fewer quotes in my notes today for some reason. I should also note that I missed the first panel, "Originality and Micro-genre" due to baby care shift.

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Panel: History as Trade Secret

History is not narrative, we write history around small pieces of narrative.

Panel: Crafting the Sentence and Paragraph

"We'll start the introductions on the far right" - Steve
"I am NOT the Far Right" - Bear
...
"Well, now that you've been introduced to /those/ two" - Abra


"Lets try this again. Bear, what makes a good sentence?"- Steve
"Omit needless words" - Bear, smiling not at all innocently


Panel: In and Out of Frame

"Tried for "ohh, creepy girls" but triggered "what happened to the black people!"" - Marissa

"Did you get pushback? This was published as Fantasy, right?"-Marissa
"Well, this was published as "Oh shit, we bought two books and this is what she turned in." - Skylar

"Do your misdirect as "it's cheese, it's cheese, don't you want cheese? And by the way it's also a spaceship." I really didn't get any sleep." - Liz

"Oh, its a M. Night Shyamalan movie. I bet it's about sentient walruses." - Marissa

[also sometime during this panel Marissa started ranting about the failings of a certain book. During this, Bear walked up to the whiteboard and under the "That's another panel" list wrote: "Marissa rants about books!" This was followed by Tim adding "in funny voices!"]

Panel: Shifts in Historical Narrative

"It will fool you into thinking that no one knew anything before the 18th century" - Max
"Before coffee came to Europe." - Caroline

"I do my best writing when I'm in jail." - Max
"Hmm. No wireless." - Caroline

This is a post with quotes (funny and mildly serious) from my notes during the Fourth Street Fantasy Convention. I think Scott Lynch came up with the best definition of this convention today: "Nothing is too small for Fourth Street - we're 150 cats looking for yarn."

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I just ducked out of my first class of "Religion and Science" to conduct my nightly prayerful IVF injection ritual.

(Estradiol numbers from my morning bloodwork were good and higher than expected at 117. So I'm in the stirrups first thing tomorrow 7:45am followed by more bloodwork.)

Brooks and I bought a new car today, and introduced Morgan to it this evening. She pronounced "Suzi car nice!" Other reactions:

"Suzi car beep!" (Pushing buttons on the key.)
"Peek a boo wheel!" (Pulling the cord to reveal the spare tire.)
"Papa in Suzi car!" (Andres climbing into trunk)

However the peace didn't last. I asked Brooks to remove the dealership license frames, and Morgan quite happily watched. "Brooks tool! Brooks fix!" But when the frame came off, Morgan became hysterical!

"Oops! Back, put it back! Suzi car broken! Broken! Books fix!" Cries of "Suzi car broken" continued while she clutched the frame and we tried to calm her down. Finally ending with "Suzi car broken... Morgy mama milk."

She snuggled into Theresa utterly baffled that we had broken Suzi's nice new car and weren't upset about it.