Girls and physics- yayy!!

Girls & physics- yayy!!

My comment on the Guardian article:

It doesn’t surprise me as much as it should that hardly any girls are going into physics. Sad, but girls and boys seem to have become further separated into camps since American TV & culture have overtaken individual national trends over the last 50 years. The 15-year-old girl next door started high school insisting she must do agriculture, but has since discovered make-up, high heels and alcohol and switched to “cheer-leading“/calisthenics as her main interest. Gahhhhh!!! When I started high school in 1964 (yikes!), there was probably some sort of “girls are dumb” talk around whether to study science or not, but at the time, I was socially very unaware. This was in NSW, Australia, where in high school, if you took science and maths, you did it as a whole unit of study, so you couldn’t pick and choose between biology & physics – we also took geology for 4 years. I was a sickly little kid who was also the class “brain” and I had no thoughts about school subjects other than to do the ones I enjoyed: Science, Maths, English, French & Art. I didn’t like History or Geography, so I got out of those as soon as I could. I loved Physics because I had been reading sciencey books and doing my own little real life experiments since I was around 8 and no one had ever discouraged me or made fun of me – so I was lucky being rather isolated/insulated! The only thing that prevented me going on to a career in astrophysics, which I really wanted to do, was the lack of clarity about how there could be a job in it, and the fact that there were no role models presented [I was in a country school with really good teachers but no other professional role models other than the local doctors). I chose to do Medicine at university because I thought I had a good idea what doctors did every day! Although I changed direction several times, I still maintain an interest in the sciences and admire the local Professor of Photonics, who is female, as she has become internationally noted for her drive and intelligence in research, plus she’s a lovely sociable person who looks OK, has a family and does normal things! People should look up Professor Tanya Monro at the University of Adelaide. She’s the foundation professor in the Institute for Photonics and Advanced Sensing (fancy physics)- have a look, parents and girls. Unfortunately we can’t prevent the local newspapers from prettying her up in nice clothes and jewellery for official photos, but she’s really quite human!

Interesting that an article on a similar theme of excluding science from “general knowledge” appeared in The Telegraph of all places yesterday:

Knowing about science is not a trivial pursuit

In this link they mention:  ”An artist once told the great physicist Richard Feynman that, as a scientist, he couldn’t appreciate a flower’s beauty: “You take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing.”… as if science is anti-beauty and anti-the arts! This is exactly the sort of talk that puts girls off doing science right at the precise time when they could get a great start in a lifelong interest and career.

NB. Tanya Monro herself replied about 5 minutes after this blog post appeared. She must have good spotters!

Book Banquet 2012

Shai Coggins’ blog reminded me that I have read quite a pile of books this year that I should list, even if just for myself. If you have read any of these and have an opinion, please comment!

1. Nonfiction. Them and Us: Changing Britain – Why We Need a Fair Society Will Hutton. This book applies equally well to the Australian scene since the Global Financial Crisis and is a big influence on how I now view the political economy of public health.
2. Nonfiction. David Harvey. The Enigma of Capital: and the Crises of Capitalism. This book was the basis of a pre-conference workshop on the Political Economy of Health before the international Public Health Association meeting in Adelaide in September 2012. It convinced me that I’m on the right track with my lack of capitalism in its present form ever leading to fairness in the distribution of resources compatible with good health in a nation. All capitalism depends on gambling that the small amounts of money held by “lesser” people can be collected together by crooks on the stock market to increase the large amounts held by people who consider themselves “the bosses” of the rest of us. It can’t keep happening as eventually the poor run out of resources, get angry and disrupt the system, or the rich find there is little value in their cash because workers are not producing anything more for them to buy with it. They can then either stockpile wealth to absolutely no avail or start financing jobs for the unemployed so the economy can start moving again. Have I convinced you? Anyway, I could rave about this forever, knowing absolutely nothing about economics!
3. Jo Nesbo The Redbreast. A horrific Scandinavian thriller, as are the next four.
4. Jo Nesbo The Leopard
5. Jo Nesbo The Devil’s Star
6. Jo Nesbo The Snowman. These are so well-written I couldn’t put them down.
7. Henning Mankell The Troubled Man. Detective Kurt Wallander has turned sixty and thinks he is succumbing to the dementia that ended his own father’s life. Meanwhile he is struggling to help solve the mystery of a murdered naval officer.
8. Peter Hoeg The Quiet Girl. Odd but thrilling, with a young girl kept apart from others by an apparently obscure group of “nuns”, helped by a strange Bach-loving clown. There are touches of magical realism about the tale but it all hangs together in the end
9. Camilla Läckberg The Ice Princess: The body of crime writer Erica Falck’s childhood friend is discovered, wrists slashed, in an ice cold bath. Was it murder or suicide? The investigation leads her to a community on the brink of tragedy.
10. Camilla Läckberg The Preacher: Twenty years ago, two young women disappeared in Fjällbacka – now their remains are found, along with a new victim. As Patrik Hedström works to solve these murders, do the dark secrets of a local family hold the key?
11. Camilla Läckberg The Stonecutter: When a little girl is found in a fisherman’s net, the police realize it was no accidental drowning. Patrik Hedström investigates the death of a child both he and Erica knew well.
12. Hakan Nesser – but can’t remember the title- think it’s different in Australia than the USA. But it’s another crime thriller.
13. Yrsa Sigurdardottir Last Rituals Set in Reykjavík, this thriller concerns the murder of a student who appears to have odd symbols carved into his chest linked to ancient folk tales.
14. Martin Walker Black Diamond. Policeman “Bruno” Benoit Couregges is on the trail of truffle merchants who are rigging the price of their expensive finds in French provincial markets.
15. Martin Walker  The Crowded Grave. I loved the description of the French countryside in this mystery about a modern murder victim concealed at an archeological dig against the suspicion of local cross-border terrorism.
16. Non-fiction. Ted Nield Supercontinent: Ten Billion Years in the Life of Our Planet. About the history of the major tectonic plates that cover the earth and how we can see the ancient links between them by matching the minerals and landforms at the break-apart sites.
17. Non-fiction. Simon Winchester Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms & a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories. I skipped most of the battles etc. & concentrated on the accounts of how the Atlantic is being widened by the upwelling of volcanoes along the mid-continental ridge and the currents that carry whole species to unusual destinations on its shores.
18. Nonfiction. Richard Dawkins. The Ancestors’ Tale. This gave me a really clear view of evolution by tracing the origins of all living species back to where they branched off from their closest genetic relative on the evolutionary tree. The explanations for the sometimes bizarre separations of different species or varieties of animals and plants from each other by geological changes, such as continental drift and tectonic plates and climate change are quite revelatory as well. One of the best books on genetic evolution I’ve ever read- much better than all the ones that start with a single cell and come from past to present!
19. Geraldine Brooks Caleb’s Crossing. The Pulitzer Prize Winner’s novel of early America- Caleb is the first Native American to attend Harvard University, after being brought up quite traditionally on the site of modern day Martha’s Vineyard.
20.  Lars Kepler The Nightmare. Detective Inspector Joona Linna investigates the recovery of a young woman’s body from an abandoned yacht drifting around the Stockholm archipelago. Her lungs are filled with brackish water, and the forensics team is sure that she drowned. Why, then, is the pleasure boat still afloat, and why are there no traces of water on her clothes or body? The story involves international conspiracy and crime on a horrific scale, not easily relatable to the original death.

You can see by this selection that I’m a great fan of modern Scandinavian crime fiction, the history of the planet and the relationship of economics to health- what a weird mix  eh?! What’s your mix look like?

 

These Were a Few of Their Favorite Things – and a few of mine

These Were a Few of Their Favorite Things – NYTimes.com.

I’ve been interested in science, reading & discovering things since I was tiny, but never had any of those wonderful construction toys that boys seemed to get for Christmas. I had plenty of dolls that I loved to dress up with clothes I had sewn & knitted for them & I was always pestering my mum for “scraps”.

At about 4 or 5 I received a wind-up train set and rails for Christmas, but never really got to play with it the way I wanted because my father immediately commandeered it and made long guided rail things from plywood around the rooms. He would usually take the wind-up bit out of my hands saying “don’t overwind it”.

Wimmer-Heinrich-HWN passenger train set

I quickly learned about the remedy for “over-winding” by taking the little engine apart while dad was at work in the South Island (NZ; he was a government statistician in the 1950s and actually went around and collected some of the data, as they did in those days!). After figuring out clockwork motors, I proceeded to take apart music boxes and wind-up monkeys & put them back together again without anyone noticing. What fun!

No chemistry set ever came my way, in spite of pleading every year, but I did get to play with the usual household substances like vinegar & baking soda, making terrific froth plumes out of soft drink bottles. Developing films in the laundry was vaguely chemical, but you couldn’t experiment with that stuff.

I WAS really interested in stars and space, due to my father showing me the Southern Aurora and tracking the first orbiting space satellites, like Sputnick I & II. He kept an ear out on shortwave radio to find out what times to expect them and we always went out on the front lawn with his old German Field Ambulance binoculars that he had acquired from a mate when he was younger. I can remember the first space dog Laika and the poor monkeys & chimpanzees that were sent up to perish in plumes of fire on re-entry.

Laika – Russian space dog

We kept track of many space objects and star and planetary happenings, and when I was a young adult (at least in years), the appearance of the comet Kouhoutek was quite a colourful spectacle low over the Pacific Ocean in front of my parents house. There was a phase I went through when I was around 14, wanting to be an astrophysicist & work with the Parkes radio telescope (The Dish). I would try to figure out the speeds and heights of orbits necessary for satellites of various weights to circle the earth and where they ought to appear at certain times – what a mess of maths that was!! No computers to help me then.

One thing that really cemented my interest in science was a children’s encyclopedia “of everything” that I received when I was eight. I read that thing to death, over and over. The parts I remember best are the chapters about the solar system and “how the body works”. I knew then that I wanted to be a doctor “when I grew up”.

From my encyclopedia

However, the book puzzled me for years because it didn’t explain exactly what happened to food-waste, once it went past the stomach: I spent years thinking that the solid waste went out through the large intestine and somehow got separated from the liquid waste that exited via the small intestine! It took some exploration of mum’s nursing textbooks to get a handle on the kidneys, which ultimately fascinated me with how they could extract the liquid from blood without letting it all leak out in your pee!

I was a pretty weird little kid at times, with allocating all my little friends in third grade a strange “disease” out of my list from the Pears’ Cyclopedia (1960 edition; I was 8) when we played hospitals! My pals got sick of it before we’d even finished “A”: they’d had achondroplastic dwarfism, asthma, acromegaly and ataxia thrust upon them before I was outvoted on what to play at lunchtimes! Incidentally, the poinciana thorns in the playground (horrors they’d say these days) got a good work-out as “needles” for the play-nurses to prick their victims!!

 

A simple glass of water

Only too well I know how distractible I am when my mood is not topnotch. To illustrate, let me tell you the saga of my attempt to get a glass of water to wash down my lunch of almonds and fresh fruit.

1. Into the kitchen I go. The devil kitty (Ms Moustiers Ste Marie, “don’t mess with me”, toothless, 21 years old and chief Demand-0-Cat) yowls for food; I fed her half a dish of chicken about 15 minutes ago.

2. Searching on the sink for the rinsed catfood spoon, I discover it has been left dirty, so I wash it.

3. I have to find a new container of catfood in the pantry.

4. Feed kitty.

5. Notice that last nights debris has not been sorted, parceled and sent bin-wards.

6. Wrap two lots of discards & recyclables.

Fantasy in the backyard

7. Take rubbish to bins, which have been left in the drive from yesterdays garbage collection run (just rubbish & metal/glass/paper recyclables, not green recyclables).
8. Go into garage to dispose of green waste.

9. Of course I noticed while out the front that I had parked the car on a tiny sliver of garden hose sticking out from the garden bed. Must shift it.

10. Into the house, fetching the car keys & promptly yowled at by THAT cat again.

11. Move car- get out, lock it. Still parked it on another piece of hose.

12. Two more car moves, including out onto the street; at last nothing is caught under the wheels.

13. Re-inflate squashed hose by running high-power jet through it for 30 seconds.

14. Back inside, feed kitty again.

15. Get clean glass, fill with tap water.

16. Sit down again,

 

It’s been a while

For the past 12 months I have deliberately not blogged much here because I wanted to use all my writing energy for finishing my MPH dissertation. Since there are only a few minor changes for me to make on that, I’m having a go at a brief blog.

Being brief is difficult now as I have heaps of topics that need some background investigation before I write about them. This isn’t exactly obsessional behaviour, but I do like to have a set of pix and links for each blog post in the hope of stimulating people to explore and have a go at something new. This time I’ll just get in some practice. If you want to know more you can research the question yourself and do your own blog post!

I have re-conquered most of my depression this year, with the help of my old shrink (whom I’d seen a few years ago for about 6 months) and some concentrated self-talk and exercise. The first thing my shrink did when I saw her in March was to recommend I start having large doses of liquid fish oil and a big fat glucosamine capsule every day! This was a new approach for her AND for me, as her training had been heavily on the psychoanalytic side but she and I both decided that was NOT the approach for me. After my first session, I trotted off to the large public hospital in the city (Royal Adelaide Hospital), where the Health Promotion Unit has a small store, dispensing various items recommended by local doctors at virtually wholesale prices. I collected my fish oil and tablets and after taking the fish oil once, I found it was quite pleasant taken in a shot glass over a mouthful of cranberry juice! Then I went to the pathology collection centre and let them suck quite a lot of blood out of me into big fat syringes for a heap of blood tests.

A week later I fronted up to the shrink to hear about the results of the blood tests and discovered quite a few startling facts about the meagre state of my blood’s contents! It turned out I was massively deficient in thyroid hormone (helping explain why I felt so sluggish & wasn’t responding well to my anti depressants [ADs]) and Vitamin D. The shrink decided to reduce my ADs by 25% to kick the side effects [the zinging noises & "brain zap" effects of venlafaxine, as described by many people] and to test out if the increased thyroxine and Vitamin could have positive effects on me. The plan was to try to reduce the ADs down to a minimum where I was functional and happy while the side effects were minimised. 

I have always been deliberately tolerant of side effects as I figure that depression is the worst feeling in the world for me, while friends have dropped like flies after trying venlafaxine because of the various different effects it’s had, including extreme nausea & retching! To cut a long story short, I started to feel better both mentally and physically within 2 weeks of the new regime! I am FREE OF SIDE EFFECTS except when I exercise vigorously towards the end of the day and then I only get a little buzzing in the head- nothing spectacular. What’s more, that effect lasts only about one minute, then I’m fine. I’ve been motivated enough to keep going to aquarobics classes every week, even when friends don’t pick me up and drive me in when they go. I’ve also been able to resume quite a bit of the regular housework, in spite of developing nasty osteoarthritis in both my wrists. I’ve stayed reasonably motivated with my MPH work, although when my supervisor didn’t give me any feedback for nearly 2 months, I slacked off, rather bewildered.

Feeling so well has been great at home because it seems to have cheered up my partner [Spotrick] so that he helps out more with the daily chores etc. This in turn has a positive feedback effect for me and there you are! My shrink has agreed that I’d best stay on the same level of ADs for a while now until I finish the MPH in a few weeks’ time. After that, we’ll try to get them down even further, gradually, until I start to get a bit too slow and then we’ll rack them up a little and continue along that track. Hopefully I’ll be able to get back into my hobbies fully then, as  haven’t knitted, sewn, quilted etc in many months, despite wanting to. I feel too guilty devoting time to hobbies and blogging while the damned MPH is unfinished. Here’s hoping I’ll be up there on stage in my fancy cap & gown come April 2013!

Australian investment banker who chained fake bomb to teenager sentenced to 13 1/2 years in jail

Australian investment banker who chained fake bomb to teenager sentenced to 13 1/2 years in jail – Winnipeg Free Press.

This guy has got me stumped. WTF? Is/was he insane? Or is he a poorly developed psychopath? And they say he mistakenly entered the wrong house and terrorised the wrong person. Huh? I would have liked to be a fly on the wall during his court appearance.

That poor girl- had her Higher School Certificate disrupted by this criminal and still managed to get top marks. Good on her. If you know her, give her a hug!

Generous me (?)

I’m a bit sensitive, I can over-think & sometimes worry about what I’ve said or done later on. I’m a lot better than I used to be and more certain of the “rightness” & “ownership” of my thoughts, words & actions. However, I can get “attacks” of self-obsession when I’m more depressed, but nowadays my victories are far more often than my defeats.

As I reminded a blog-friend [?fiend?], I can be very assertive about discounts when checkout operators ring up the original, non-discounted price- I just say “No!, I’m sure you’re mistaken. Please check.” Always works.

As readers of my blog might have noted a few weeks ago, I have had a rough patch on the artistic side of my life, involving a cafe owner who went back on their word to hang my photographs AFTER I had spent Spotrick’s money on the frames. It upset me a lot for a day or two, I felt so exploited and guilty as well. Then I decided to  take a positive step and approach the local Council Arts Officer, who came up with great solutions for me and I’m fine about all that now.

Two of my sushi dishes

This week I even fought off a gallery owner who had mistakenly deposited $800 in my bank account when they asked for it all back. Previously I had celebrated selling some glass work at their gallery after having zero income from it for many years. I’ve been pleased & happy about the sales for weeks now- told all my friends etc. But THEN I got a phone call from the gallery proprietor saying the mistaken deposits had occurred. Although I explained that I had no job or independent income she asked if I could make an arrangement with Centrelink to pay the money “back to her” gradually! Great idea- except I don’t get any benefits through Centrelink- I’m totally dependent on Spotrick. There was no way I could pay back all the money, although there was half of it remaining in my bank account. I told the woman I was willing to pay back half voluntarily but there was little hope I could obtain any more money for the rest. She called me mean, unethical, a thief & other things, which I felt very hurt about.

However, armed with the mental strength from all my recent therapy, thyroid level correction,  fish oil & Vitamin D oil supplements, endorphins from exercising & renewed strength & less nagging pain in my hands due to arthritis treatment, I was determined to stand up for myself. So I calmly & assertively said to her (after nearly crumbling & bursting into tears),“YOUR MISTAKE LADY! I’m keeping half because I’ve already spent it quite innocently.” Buggered if I was going to make Spotrick pay for their mistake in not being able to distinguish a glass artist from a printmaker who had the same name! And “Perhaps you can let me speak to the other artist and we can come to an agreement that both of us have sold things through the gallery & we can share the losses as well as the sales?” But no, she wanted the whole lot back, without a legal leg to stand on. She told me I would get a call from her accountant but I didn’t. The accountant probably told her she’d done her cash by depositing it in my account! I have voluntarily deposited half the total in the gallery’s bank account & I’m totally happy with the outcome & my own behaviour now.

Two bee rose

 I reckon they are lucky I am a fair person by actually giving half back. I said NO & I’m happy- no guilty thoughts at all. Yayy!!!

PS. You wouldn’t believe it, but the gallery has now rung me a few days later saying they deposited ANOTHER $800 by mistake in my account. I was just about laughing my guts out, but I demurely got online right then, during the phone call & transferred it all back to them. Talk about incompetence- they’ll have to pull up their socks in their accounting department! They didn’t even notice when I thanked them via email for the original unexpected deposit by saying “Wow- thanks for selling another piece of my GLASS” when the stuff they had sold were prints! Any more deposits will immediately be spent on more frames for my photo exhibition!

REPLY

Wilted

The cafe who had asked me to provide framed photos for their walls has cancelled right after I ordered the frames, matts & prints.

I am totally wilted & numb. What will I do to get some self esteem back? And the dollars of friends who invested in me?

Not good, not feeling good.

Folding towels sucks

I can’t believe that folding a towel & 6 tea towels made both wrists go click & hurt enough to draw tears. Grand Theft Suckage!

That was the last straw for today. Having already delivered the recharged laptop next door (they got loaned a Macbook Air without a charger- duh…), fed the cats, put on a load of washing, Swiffed the floors of cat hair, made cups of tea and taken daily pills, I was just revving up to clearing the local pigsty, since Spotrick is ill & all.

Its obvious

So the rugs will have to stay hairy, the bedroom piled with boxes exchanging summer clothes for winter, the washing stalled before Spotrick’s work clothes are washed, the dishwasher unemptied from yesterday, the fishy plastic bag stuck in the sink clogging up the drain, the dirty dishes from last night and breakfast festooned over the kitchen, the cat food strewn over the kitchen floor & the bathroom not subjected to it’s weekly super-sprucing, the snail pellets not distributed around the tree dahlia, the kangaroo paws not planted in the front garden, the pillowcases not changed for 4 weeks, the hedgetrimmer not bought from the hardware store (so the hedge is untrimmed so the clothes can’t hang on half the line), the bins not put out for 2 weeks due to WTF and…and…and.

I’m taking the rest of the day off. SOD everything & I’m having peanut M&Ms for lunch.

I think we’re right. Vitamin D

Friends and I have had many conversations on the subject of why so many people have depression these days. I’ve also noticed that many are far more depressed than you would imagine, given their overall life circumstances.

Recently, I found I am massively deficient in Vitamin D and am now taking a course of oral doses in oil for six months to build up my levels so I won’t get brittle bones (osteoporosis). Previously I had no idea I would be deficient- it was detected by a canny shrink who ordered a pile of blood tests. Once I’m off the oil, I’ll take the same capsules you can get in the supermarket or pharmacy, which have a much lower dose but maintain a healthy level in the blood.

Lovely natural melanin

Looking at the wider world, there is general agreement that there are many more depressed people coming forward for help these days than you might expect from historical numbers. It’s not just that there is less stigma and more (and better) treatment available- there seem to be more individuals who are moderately to severely distressed than there ought to be along with more eating disorders. My mum would have been missed in statistics collected from doctors and hospitals when she was alive, but I realise she was depressed during most of my life. She seemed to suffer in silence and I insensitively thought she was “acting the martyr” when I was really young because she would sing these dirgey songs around the house which she ascribed to her own mother’s influence! There were obviously a dour, depressive bunch of Scots to some extent, conforming to stereotype. I suppose there was no useful treatment in those days any way, so they would have suffered like most did before Prozac.

Fair skin & freckles!

Why are so many depressed AND Vitamin D deficient? My friends and I think it is simply lack of sunshine. The human species seems to have evolved to derive a lot of benefit from exposure to sunlight, which they were able to gain from their first forays out of caves to hunt for animals during the day time. Apparently the hairier humanoids died out in favour of our smoother-skinned ancestors who had less natural sun protection. Some races evolved dark melanised skin which allowed sufficient absorption if they lived near the Equator and most Scandinavians in the far North, with their fair hair and skin, manage to absorb enough if they spend plenty of time outdoors during summer. A few of us unfortunately have very white skin with just a few patches of melanin, ie. freckles, so we can burn in the sun before we absorb what we need. All this Slip Slop Slap that served to protect us from harmful burning & skin cancer via sunscreen, protective clothing & hats has made a heap of people (mainly Australians I think) quite deficient in Vitamin D. It would be interesting to do a genetic survey alongside a study of average sunlight exposures of people with different skin colours at different latitudes (Equator to polar circles). I know there is some scientific data around, but haven’t heard of a comprehensive inquiry into the surge in depression vs. Vit D & skin colour. Most American people with dark Negro skin derived from their Equatorial African ancestors live too far North to gain Vitamin D from the sun, even if they’re farmers or roofers. They should ALL be on Vitamin D supplements these days, with indoor occupations being the norm. Since most fair-skinned people also work indoors, they need Vitamin D as well, even though they would derive great benefit from time in the sun every day.

Now that modern living has influenced the amount of time we spend outdoors during daylight by making us work indoors on machines & computers, the human race in the form of our common gene pool, may have failed to adapt to our changed “normal” environment. Perhaps the surge in obesity recently is an evolutionary strategy by the human body to acquire more Vitamin D from food rather than from sunlight? Obviously oily foods like potato chips & bacon don’t contain much of the most suitable oil, but our genes are not intelligent, they just drive our urges and actions.

We haven’t taken much notice of a 2008 study reported first in the Harvard Women’s Health Watch and later in other publications that encouraged everyone to get extra vitamin D unless they had a largely outdoor occupation. This site explains about Vitamin D in everyday language with a sprinkling of medi-talk. It’s not intended as a substitute for consulting a qualified doctor about your individual needs, but is very clear about the huge importance of Vitamin D for a healthy life.

Recently the New York Times health blog had a good piece on Vitamin D, prompted because the writer was continually being asked for advice! There doesn’t seem to be any high-profile campaign in Australia to encourage people to get a sufficient dose of Vitamin D, just the occasional TV advertisement, conveyed with no real passion. On the other hand, there is still plenty of publicity on preventing skin cancer by using sunscreen and avoiding the hours of the day when sunlight is strongest! It’s a dilemma!