h1

February birthdays

February 19, 2012

When I was growing up in Vermont, May was our family’s big month for birthdays. My sister and my mother and I were all born then, as was at least one grandparent. Even my parents’ anniversary is in May.

February 2012 may rival May for natal significance, though. My dad just turned 70, and his sister is currently celebrating her 72nd birthday with a once-in-a-lifetime trip to New Zealand. Two of my great musical heroes, Carole King and my friend Do, share a birth date of February 9th. And last Friday we celebrated the February birthdays of three members of our lab, including my boss.

My personal contribution to the lab party was a goofy poster reminding people of it. Accompanying my headline — “Celebrate the Aging Process!” — was a graph showing that telomere length declines with age in dividing cells. If nothing else, I succeeded in amusing myself.

To celebrate Carole King’s (70th!) birthday the week before that, I bought a VHS tape of Really Rosie, King’s 1975 TV collaboration with Maurice Sendak, and watched it with my son. The animation seemed quite crude by 2012 standards, but the music seemed as timeless as ever. Has anyone else ever made such sweet music about counting, the alphabet, and the months of the year?

Posted in Family, Music | Leave a Comment »

h1

The guilty pleasures of Scooby-Doo

February 15, 2012

When I’m totally honest about it, I can admit that Phil and I watch too much Scooby-Doo, the animated TV show about four mystery-solving teenagers and their Great Dane. But when I’m feeling slightly defensive, rationalizations abound.

To start with, there is, “Carl Sagan endorsed it, so it must be good.” Sagan presumably knew a thing or two about compelling, worthwhile videography, as he starred in the TV series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage and wrote the novel on which the movie Contact was based. In his book The Demon-Haunted World, Sagan praised Scooby-Doo for consistently showing that paranormal events have rational explanations.

Then there’s the nostalgia angle. We’ve been watching the What’s New, Scooby-Doo? incarnation of the show (2002-05) in which the character of Velma was voiced by Mindy Cohn, and Shaggy was voiced by Casey Kasem — Mindy Cohn of The Facts of Life, and Casey Kasem of the American Top 40 countdown. For those who grew up in the ’80s, as I did, these familiar, iconic voices are more than a little pleasing.

Phil likes the show because, hey, it’s about a big, goofy talking dog, and what’s not to like about that? But perhaps there is more to his enjoyment than meets the eye.

Posted in Nostalgia, Parenthood | Leave a Comment »

h1

Evening bike ride

February 11, 2012

Phil [pointing to a sticker on his bike]: “What does that say, Dad?”

Me: “‘Warning!’ Um, I can’t read the rest. [Pulls a light off the bike and points it at the sticker.] OK, here we go…. ‘This bicycle is not designed for competition, stunting, jumping, or off-road use. Bicycling can be hazardous. Always wear a safety helmet. Do not ride at night.’”

Posted in Parenthood, Sports | Leave a Comment »

h1

Improvised sports, #2: Bomb-Pong

January 30, 2012

My destruction-loving son and I came up with this — a follow-up to Sock-Drawer Basketball — over the weekend.

Materials needed: 2 paddles or small rackets; 1 balloon to serve as a bomb; 1 net or equivalent barrier.

How to play: The paddles are used to hit the bomb back and forth over the net (one hit per turn). Players try not to let the bomb touch the floor because this causes it to detonate, obliterating the person on that side of the net, who is declared the loser of the game.

Posted in Parenthood, Sports | 1 Comment »

h1

Counterpoint: forget the polar bears — save yourself!

January 27, 2012

Yesterday Phil’s concerns about global warming and polar bears translated into a willingness to ride our trail-a-bike to his preschool in the rain. We got a flat, though, and had to walk the last ten blocks. (I have a patch kit but can’t use it effectively when I’m away from home, stressed out, accompanied by an impatient kid, etc.) Then I took a bus back home and drove to work, arriving about 90 minutes late.

Despite that mishap, Phil wanted to try again this morning, so I put in a new tube and we were off. Before long I had another flat, three more bus rides, and another 90-minute delay in getting to work.

During the day, Recycled Cycles changed the tube and also replaced my old, cracked tires. Then I biked back to Phil’s preschool to pick him up. We didn’t even make it off of the school grounds before: SSSS…. It was my third flat in about 14 miles of biking over two days. We got back on the bus and headed home.

I’m so proud of Phil for applying what he’s learning at school to choices made outside of the classroom. Nevertheless, as I told one of his teachers, this save-the-polar-bears stuff is killing me.

Posted in Parenthood, Sports | 1 Comment »

h1

It’s Ladies’ Night in Panama

January 26, 2012

It hadn’t occurred to me that both of these bands might still be touring — together….

It's Ladies' Night in Panama.

Posted in Music, Nostalgia | Leave a Comment »

h1

My little environmentalist

January 25, 2012

Today I picked Phil up from preschool after not seeing him for five days.

I entered the school with my bike helmet on.

The first words out of his mouth: “Dad! It’s good you’re using the car less, because polar bears might die. You know that because you’re a scientist.”

How’s that for a content-rich greeting?

Posted in Parenthood, Quote Board, Science | 2 Comments »

h1

A zooey dejeuner

January 16, 2012

Yesterday’s weather was unusually cold and snowy for Seattle, but we packed a lunch and headed to the zoo anyway.

monkeying around at the zoo

We mostly stayed in the Zoomazium, a semi-educational indoor play area.

To be honest, that’s what we usually do at the zoo on nice days, too.

Posted in Parenthood, Pix | Leave a Comment »

h1

To bike or to hike?

January 13, 2012

Today there was a seminar in a building maybe 8 minutes away on foot. Should I have biked or should I have walked?

Here are some simplifying assumptions (in SI units):
* My sole goal was to get there and back as quickly as possible.
* The same clothing suffices for biking and for walking. (The burden of putting on a helmet is negligible.)
* I can walk comfortably at a rate of 1.5 meters per second and can bike comfortably at 6 meters per second. There are no stairs or traffic stops to worry about.
* For each one-way trip, it takes me 15 extra seconds to walk to and from the bike racks (which take me away from the most direct route between my start and my destination) and 35 seconds to unlock and lock the bike. Thus a round trip (of any length) of biking will require 100 extra seconds in addition to the actual biking.

So what is the length of a “break-even” trip, at which biking and walking are equally fast, and above which it would be faster to bike?

tw = walking time (in seconds) needed to cover distance d (in meters).

Distance = speed*time.

If walking and biking are equally fast for an unknown distance d0, then
d0 = (1.5 m/s)*tw = (6 m/s)*(tw – 100).
1.5*tw = 6*tw – 600.
4.5*tw = 600.
tw = 600/4.5 = 133.3 seconds!
d0 = (133.3 s)*(1.5 m/s) = 200 meters!

In other words, if the round-trip distance to be covered is more than 200 meters, or takes more than 133.3 seconds to walk, it’s faster to bike.

This answer surprised me. I hadn’t realized that even a 4-minute walk could be replaced with a less-than-4-minute bike trip. I guess the “hassle” of locking and unlocking the bike makes biking seem less efficient than it really is.

Posted in Academia | Leave a Comment »

h1

Greg’s crackpot theories, #2: your favorite songs really DO sound better on the radio

January 12, 2012

My musical tastes are not that sophisticated. Above all else, I love catchy pop songs — the kind cranked out by They Might Be Giants, Stephin Merritt (of The Magnetic Fields), and Fountains of Wayne. I agree with Alex Fletcher, Hugh Grant’s character in Words and Music, who says of pop music, “Nothing can make you feel as good as fast.”

Some music-induced buzzes are better than others, though. The highest highs come when I’m listening to something that is NOT a catchy song — a less accessible song, a weather report, whatever — before the catchy song washes over me in a wave of pleasure. The non-catchy “baseline” makes the arrival of the catchy song that much better. Thus, I especially enjoy favorite songs when I hear them on the radio because they often follow, say, commercials for The Shane Company.

This thought about non-catchy baselines was inspired by repeated listening to John Linnell’s 1999 album State Songs (a favorite of my 5-year-old son, who refers to it as “the Green Music” because the CD is green). It includes a very catchy project overture, “The Songs of the 50 States,” which many artists would have used as the opening track. But Linnell leads off with a willfully unhip instrumental, “Illinois,” before plunging into “The Songs of the 50 States.” Why? I think he realized that the perceived catchiness of “The Songs of the 50 States” would be enhanced by preceding it with a much less catchy ditty.

Right or wrong, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Posted in Music | 2 Comments »

Older Entries »
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.