These are strange times

These are strange times, apocalyptic times (that's sometimes how it feels to me). Climate change, weird weather, extreme weather, bee death, relentless forest fires in Australia, and now the corona virus (I'm waiting for the spread of a zombie virus). I keep telling my husband that I'll know what to do if the zombie apocalypse arrives; after all, I've watched almost eight seasons of The Walking Dead. And I did learn something--that we humans are our own worst enemy, in terms of how we will treat each other, especially if a longer-term pandemic does become the reality concerning the corona virus. But people are afraid and I understand that. As of today, the number of confirmed infected persons in Norway is 56, but there are many people who are quarantined, waiting for symptoms to develop (or not) after exposure to infected people. I work in the healthcare profession, at a hospital where the contagion began at the eye department with a doctor who had recently come home from vacation in northern Italy. Unfortunate circumstances led to some of his co-workers being infected, and also that over four hundred patients had to be contacted because they had been in for consultations during the several days it took to confirm that the doctor was indeed infected with the virus. Information and status updates are one thing; containment is another discussion entirely.
I'm not sure what to make of it all. I take precautions--washing my hands, sneezing into my elbow, working at home when I can, but the scientist in me tells me that it will be very hard to contain the virus. It will spread. Whether or not it will lead to fatalities is another question. I hope not. I understand the difficult (nearly impossible) job that hospital leaders face. Should they tell all employees to stay home? They cannot, because they need their staff to take care of sick patients and to perform scheduled operations and tests. Patients could die of non-virus-related causes if they don't get the care they need. There is a risk associated with all decisions. For example, potentially-infected people can be quarantined, but can you police them day and night? Can you ensure that they won't go outside their homes to shop, walk the dog, etc.? And who will be doing the policing? Can you quarantine whole families? After all, if one person is quarantined, he or she will come into contact with family members, unless he or she is shunned by family members. I'm not sure how it all can work according to plan. The human factor has to be factored in--the factor that says that a sick or infected person will be cared for by his or her family members. How do you avoid that? Time will tell how all of this will develop. But we have already seen the effects of 'pandemic' thinking on global economies and the stock market. It's hard to predict how long all of this will last. We can hope that it will be over fairly soon. The question will be what have we learned from this experience. One can hope that it will help us to prepare better for the next eventuality.

Another good one (song)

Another favorite these days......

Touches a nerve--this song

Something about this song and Billie Eilish who sings it--hard to believe she's only eighteen years old. Such a good song. Makes me feel the same way as I did when I first heard Summertime Sadness by Lana Del Rey. Touches a nerve.....





And the lyrics:

everything i wanted

Billie Eilish

I had a dream
I got everything I wanted
Not what you'd think
And if I'm being honest

It might've been a nightmare
To anyone who might care
Thought I could fly (fly)
So I stepped off the golden, mm
Nobody cried (cried, cried, cried, cried)
Nobody even noticed
I saw them standing right there
Kinda thought they might care (might care, might care)

I had a dream
I got everything I wanted
But when I wake up, I see
You with me

And you say, "As long as I'm here
No one can hurt you
Don't wanna lie here
But you can learn to
If I could change
The way that you see yourself
You wouldn't wonder why you're here
They don't deserve you"

I tried to scream
But my head was underwater
They called me weak
Like I'm not just somebody's daughter

It could've been a nightmare
But it felt like they were right there
And it feels like yesterday was a year ago
But I don't wanna let anybody know
'Cause everybody wants something from me now
And I don't wanna let 'em down

I had a dream
I got everything I wanted
But when I wake up, I see
You with me

And you say, "As long as I'm here
No one can hurt you
Don't wanna lie here
But you can learn to
If I could change
The way that you see yourself
You wouldn't wonder why you're here
They don't deserve you"

If I knew it all then would I do it again?
Would I do it again?
If they knew what they said would go straight to my head
What would they say instead?
If I knew it all then would I do it again?
Would I do it again?
If they knew what they said would go straight to my head
What would they say instead?

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Billie Eilish O'Connell / Finneas Baird O'Connell

Questions from an astronomy hobbyist

After watching the excellent BBC series The Planets, I realized that I know little to nothing about how we actually get rockets off the ground and into space in order for them to explore our solar system. That is probably the case for most people; they're content just to watch the marvel of space travel without understanding it. And I agree--it is wondrous to watch rockets take off, escape the pull of gravity, move into orbit around the earth, and even to watch booster rockets return to their launch pads as was the case with one of the SpaceX missions in 2019 (https://youtu.be/HVqWEoyiaBA). I haven't experienced the need to understand some of what is actually going on, until now. Because I have so many questions; you can't watch programs like The Planets and not have questions. For example, why are planets round in shape, rather than rectangular or octagonal? The answer is gravity. If you want the full answer, google this question and read some of the links that are returned. As it turns out, gravity is the answer to many of the questions about what has gone on and what goes on in the solar system--e.g. the formation of the planets. So what is gravity? My husband smiles when I ask this question; he studied biophysics in college and has a good background in math and physics. There is no simple answer. He reminds me that astronomers and scientists have been studying gravity forever, and will probably still be studying it a century from now. As Wikipedia states:
Attempts to develop a theory of gravity consistent with quantum mechanics, a quantum gravity theory, which would allow gravity to be united in a common mathematical framework (a theory of everything) with the other three fundamental interactions of physics, are a current area of research. 

So, for those of you who understand much more than I do in this field, you'll have to pardon my ignorance. These are my questions listed below, and I'm well on my way to reading about each of them, albeit, reading the articles about them written for lay people. My understanding of the complicated math and physics necessary to understand all of this ended when I was in my second year of college (I hit the math wall when we began to study the derivatives of trigonometric functions). So my interest in astronomy and cosmology is purely that of a hobbyist.

• What are the different kinds of rockets?
• What powers a booster rocket?
• What powers main engine rockets?
• Where are booster and main rockets manufactured?
• Where is the fuel manufactured?
• There is solid fuel and liquid fuel--which ones are used in the different types of rockets?
• Why are nuclear reactors not used to power rockets?
• What keeps rockets going in deep space; why don't they use up their fuel quickly?
• Why do spaceships go into orbit? To save fuel? 
• How did the SpaceX booster rockets manage to get back to earth? Most of the time the booster rockets end up in the oceans and are retrieved by ships for reuse at future launches.
• What is a gravitational slingshot (gravity assist)?
• What is tidal force? (this played a huge role in the formation of the planets)

These are just some of the questions I have, and am currently exploring online in order to find answers that I can understand as a layperson. NASA itself has a very good website that provides a lot of useful information: https://www.nasa.gov/ , and there are other very good websites for astronomy hobbysists as well. 

After seeing the movie Interstellar in 2014, my interest in our universe really took off, if for no other reason than that I wanted to understand some of the concepts brought up in that movie (tesseracts, for example). I bought the book The Science of Interstellar, written by Kip Thorne, and read it carefully. But prior to that, my interest was already piqued by many of the astronomy lectures sponsored by the University of Oslo's Science Library when I worked there as a consultant from 2010 to 2013. There was and is a healthy interest in astronomy and cosmology on this campus, and it was reflected in the choice of invited speakers. And if I think back even further, to when I was a pre-teenager and a teenager, I was already interested in science fiction, reading authors like Ray Bradbury, Madeleine L' Engle, Isaac Asimov, C.S. Lewis, Ira Levin, and others. So the table was set many years ago. At least I know how I am going to use some of my time when I retire; I plan on visiting Cape Canaveral in Florida again (this time I'll appreciate it more), as well as at least one of the astronomical observatories in the USA as well as one here in Norway (not far from Oslo). As one of my former university professors wrote to me recently, 'you'll definitely have no problem keeping yourself intellectually occupied'. I think he's right.

Reflections on revenge

A strange topic to reflect upon, you might think. But after reading Gullburet (The Golden Cage) by Camilla Läckberg (a Swedish crime novelist), I had to weigh in with some of my thoughts and feelings about it. The book itself is lightweight; I wouldn’t give it more than C+, so I won’t exactly recommend it as an interesting crime story. It’s more of an adolescent fantasy about a thirty-something woman who takes revenge on the husband who has wronged her. Her childhood included a violent father, an abused mother, and a brother who committed suicide. Of course the husband who has wronged  her is a standard archetypal role model for real bad boy sociopathic behaviour, including narcissism, physical and psychological abuse of others, betrayal, pathological lying, manipulation, sex addiction, rape, and paedophilia. The list is long. While he (and his cronies who are just like him) engage in all this bad behaviour, they run billion dollar companies, drink the best liquor and wines, eat at the best restaurants, and dress in designer clothes. They live in huge homes in Stockholm overlooking the water that are furnished with designer furniture, drive the most expensive cars money can buy, and have housekeepers and nannies to take care of the houses and children to whom they are mostly indifferent. It’s all for show, including the wives and children, who are also dressed in designer clothes and who must live up to a certain standard. Hence the title, The Golden Cage; women trapped in loveless marriages gilded with all the money they can think of. Why would anyone want to leave such a cage? But of course we know that such men use women and use them up, divorce them, and replace them with younger versions whom they will treat in much the same way as the ex-wives they have kicked to the curb, so there is no safety or stability in the gilded cage. I guess all this happens more frequently in the world of the rich. I for one could not identify with most of the main characters in the book, nor would I want to. I did not identify with the main character Faye whose husband betrays her and kicks her to the curb, because she is also a sociopath who is not averse to murdering others if that is what it takes to rid her path of obstacles on her way toward achievement of the goals she has set for herself. It’s a strange book, but it did put me on the path of reflection about what revenge is and how others deal with being wronged. Faye does get her revenge on her husband and destroys his life, but I had to wonder why she bothered. It all seemed a bit much to me. Moving on from him would have been enough, but then there wouldn’t have been a book to write.

Revenge is “the action of hurting or harming someone in return for an injury or wrong suffered at their hands” (Oxford online dictionary). I remember the expression ‘Revenge is a dish best eaten cold’. It implies a cool and calculating reaction to those who have treated you badly—that you should plan your revenge coldly and carefully. I can understand this approach, rather than screaming, ranting and raving toward the perpetrator who has victimized you. Hot anger is much less preferable to cold revenge. Hot anger shows the perpetrator that he or she has gotten to you, gotten under your skin, and that gives him or her power over you. Much better to play it cool and to plan revenge carefully, if that is your thing. In that way, you retain your power over yourself and the situation, and you keep the others around you guessing.

But what if revenge is not your thing? Most people who have been wronged don’t take revenge on those who have hurt them, not in big ways anyway. Most spouses who have experienced betrayal,  unfaithfulness, and/or abuse choose divorce (however messy) in order to be able to go on with their lives in a peaceful and stable way and to protect children if children are involved. Most people who have been wronged simply want to escape those who have wronged them, just want to get away from them and never see them again, or want to have as little as possible to do with them. They may achieve this, or they may not; their lives may continue to be difficult, but I’m betting that for most of them, just being free of those who have wronged them is worth gold.

Our Christian faith encourages us to forgive those who have sinned against us, who have wronged us. We are often told to ‘forgive and forget’. One of the things I reflected on today was that it is one thing to forgive a transgression against us; with time, the intensity of the hurt fades and we are able to go on with our lives. It is said that ‘time heals all wounds’, and that is mostly true. But it is not true that we forget those wounds, despite what the expression says. It is very difficult to forget the hurt done to one, even if we suppress it and go on about our daily lives. In any case, forgiveness is a choice, a decision, an active process, to pardon another person who has wronged us, even if that person has not asked for forgiveness, or perhaps, in spite of that fact. But we often cannot forget the wrong done us, even if we forgive it. The person who has wronged us knows this, knows that the wronged person will forever go around with the memory of who that person is and how they wronged them (a snapshot in time), despite the fact that the transgressor may have evolved or changed into a better person. In other words, true revenge, life’s revenge, is the reality that in the minds of many wronged people, the person who sinned against them will forever be ‘that bad person who hurt them’. That has got to sting. The person or persons who wronged them will not have a clean slate with those they have wronged; they will retain the identity of 'bad person', especially if there is no longer contact with them. The memories of the transgressions will always be there, under the surface. I know several betrayed women who forgave their husbands’ infidelities and consented to live further with them. But ask them if they managed to forget the bad behaviour, and the answer is no. They live with these men by setting aside the hurt and not talking about it as a couple. The men have apologized. But their wives no longer trust them as they once did. Thus these women have ended up with the power to forgive and to forget, but the inability to forget is a type of natural revenge that seals the fate of the transgressor. It locks the transgressors into an identity that they cannot shed, and they end up subjugated to the power of those they have wronged in a kind of penance. That type of power, if wielded correctly, is not necessarily a bad thing since it keeps people on their toes and on their good behaviour. But it does limit freedom. I sometimes wonder if it is possible to rebuild trust once it has been destroyed; I don't have any simple answers.

We are asked to be like Christ, who suffered humiliation, torture and finally death on a cross. He asked for forgiveness for those who wronged him. But it is hard to be like Christ. We can try, and we should try, but no one can force us to forgive another before we are ready. No one can tell us to forget the wrong done us before we are ready. We cannot forgive and forget overnight, and those who think we should do so are fools, or they are people who have never experienced the difficulty of being hurt and trying to forgive. Forgiveness is a process that can take many years; forgetting may or may not occur—it is impossible to predict. It is completely normal to wish that bad things would happen to bad people who have wronged us (this rarely happens and if it does, there is no superstition involved). It is completely normal to hope that ‘time wounds all heels’. It is completely normal to smile inwardly when we see a bad person get his or her comeuppance. My point is that this is usually enough 'revenge' for most wronged people; they don’t need to envision elaborate revenge fantasies and actualize those fantasies; they don't need to take down those who have wronged them. In some cases, the transgressors destroy themselves, in other cases, time and life take care of them, especially if they haven’t learned from their bad behaviour and continue on their destructive paths. Many bad people grow old and end up alone and lonely. I have watched the rise and fall of a few bad people, and it’s hard to feel sorry for them, especially knowing how they treated other people. But if they want forgiveness, they need to prove that they have changed and evolved; they need to earn the forgiveness of those they have wronged. They can start by truly apologizing, making amends, and changing their behaviour for good.That is the only way back.

In praise of NASA

I've been watching the BBC series The Planets, narrated by professor Brian Cox. It's an amazing and breathtakingly beautiful series, and I highly recommend it. So far I've seen the following episodes:

• Life Beyond the Sun--Saturn
• Into the Darkness--Ice Worlds, which covers Uranus, Neptune, the former planet Pluto and the Kuiper Belt
• A Moment in the Sun--The Terrestrial Planets, which covers Mercury, Venus, and Mars and discusses them comparatively with Earth

The final two episodes deal with Jupiter, Earth and Mars, and I'm looking forward to seeing them. 

Besides the wonder inspired by Cox's fascinating presentation of the planets in our solar system, I am in awe of all that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has accomplished since they started their space exploration program in 1958. Founded by President Dwight Eisenhower, this independent agency of the US federal government has delivered time and again, exploring the far reaches of our solar system and uncovering the secrets of the planets and the moons that orbit them. 

But it is the daily lives of the NASA employees that interest me as well--the astronauts, astronomers, cosmologists, technicians, engineers, computer scientists, biologists, geologists--the team of scientists who work together to bring about the success of each space mission. There have been catastrophic failures from which they have learned, and moved on from. But the successes are brilliant and breathtaking, and I love watching the control room explode into joy and relief when a mission has been successful--when pictures are received from millions of miles away from Earth, when a spacecraft lands and begins to move about a planet's surface, or just when the rocket carrying these probes into space takes off successfully. When I think about what NASA has accomplished--the engineering feats necessary to land a spacecraft/probe on distant planets, or to orbit them for long periods of time--I am impressed with the attention to the minutest detail that has facilitated the gorgeous pictures taken by cameras that survive the harshest atmospheres and conditions. Because it is that attention to detail that defines science and real scientists. It is why a scientific career is not for everyone, but for those of us who have worked in science, we can attest to the fact that the success of any experiment lies in the well-planned details. The basic knowledge has to be there first, along with creativity and futuristic visions, and the combination of these leads to the discovery of new data and realities that further our knowledge and expand our ways of looking at things. 

I am proud too of the politicians who envisioned this program for the USA. Despite the fact that it was part of our space race with the Russians during the Cold War era, it grew far beyond that into true scientific exploration. Little did the politicians know when NASA was established that men would actually walk on the moon, that motorized vehicles would traverse the surface of Mars, that spacecraft would travel out into the Kuiper Belt at the edge of our solar system. It boggles the mind, truly, to see what has been accomplished. Yes, it has been expensive, and there are those who would argue unnecessarily expensive, that the money could have been better spent on other things. Perhaps. But when I watch the public response to rocket lift-offs, to moon landings, to Mars landings, it tells me that it is worth the money. Because we are learning all the time, we are doing what man/woman is meant to do--explore his/her surroundings, question his/her origins, and ponder the meaning of life in general and his/her life in particular, on the one planet in our solar system that supports life as we know it. We are blessed each and every day to be able to wake up on a planet that provides all of the conditions we need to live. That by itself is awe-and -gratitude inspiring. 

The Giver of Stars and patriarchal societies

I just finished reading The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes, and can highly recommend it. Moyes wrote a fictional novel about a group of women in Depression-era Kentucky who became the Pack Horse librarians—traveling by horse to the rural mountainous areas of Kentucky to deliver books, magazines, comic books and recipes to households wanting to become more literate. The Pack Horse library project was part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) set into motion by Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. These women braved bad weather, treacherous conditions, brutal men, ignorant people, and despite these hindrances, pushed on, providing a much-needed service. In the process, they became friends, and that is really the book’s story. It is an empowering book for women, because it presents their daily lives and struggles in ways that any woman could understand. It also presents how the women deal with issues of race, abuse of women, unhappy loveless marriages, patriarchal attitudes toward women, feminism, self-identity, self-esteem, love, and friendship. It is impossible to read this book without becoming involved in the lives of these women; you end up rooting for them, admiring their intelligence, perseverance and cleverness when dealing with the patriarchal attitudes and threats from some of the men living alongside them in their small Kentucky town. You also feel their fears; the threats of rape and violence if they don’t toe the line or do what some of the more ignorant men in the book want them to do. Luckily, Moyes balances the ignorant and often violent men with men who are the opposite—open to learning/changing and empathic. The latter are the men who love these women and who support them, in often non-conventional ways. It is impossible to read this book and not reflect on the damage that patriarchal attitudes have done to relationships between men and women, but also between men and their children (both male and female—many of them cowed into submission to brutal fathers). It made me think about how what my life could have been like at that time. Was it just a toss of the coin that led to your being married to a good man or a bad one? Some of the parents didn’t seem to care one way or another if a man was violent to his spouse; in the book, it is not the husband who was abusive to his wife, but his own father---a powerful man in the town and a truly nasty character that you end up wishing would suffer or die or both. One might have expected that the town’s priest would support the woman rather than her father-in-law, but no, it was her duty to return to that house where she lived with her husband and his father. She does not return after she is battered by her father-in-law, and that leads to all sorts of problems for her and her fellow traveling librarians, one of whom is also a target of this nasty man, because she lives her life on her terms, and that is anathema to a man like him.

Those of you who know me, who read this blog, know that I am no fan of patriarchal societies, families, religions, or workplaces. I cannot now (and was never able to from the time I was a teenager), support policies and laws that are unjust to, exclude or demean women. The one way to guarantee that I will fight for something is for men I have no respect for tell me how women should live, work, think, or otherwise exist. If you want to fire me up, that is the sure-fire way to do it.

Firstly, it is important to mention that I respect a lot of men. I have written many times in this blog about my bosses at my first job in Manhattan and how much they supported and encouraged me in my scientific career. I’ve talked about my father and what a good man he was; he never told me directly that I could not do something in the society I was growing up in because I was a woman. We rarely talked about the difficulties I might face because I was a woman, but when we did I knew that was because he wished to protect me from some of the crap he knew I would eventually face, especially in the work world. So many times I wish he was still alive so that I could talk to him about some of the things that I’ve experienced up through the years. One of the last conversations I had with him shortly before he died was one where he told me that he just wanted me to be happy, and that meant more to me than anything else at that time. He did not say to me that I should follow the written and unwritten rules in society for how women should live and behave, he did not say to me that I should abide by the tenets of my religion when it came to my personal life (nor did my mother). He did not push me to marry or to have children or to do any of the traditional things that women were often expected to do. He left those decisions up to me. He would never have forced me to marry someone I did not love. He was no patriarch. Yes, he could be strict and stubborn at times, but he was both a smart and empathic man. He felt others’ pain, responded to it by trying to alleviate it, often at times when he had his own pain, especially as he got older. One of the nicest memories I have is when he called me at work one day just to tell me he loved me. I was lucky to have him as my father. A lot of men simply cannot hold a candle to him.

The men I don’t respect are the ones who want to run roughshod over you, the ones who dominate you in all conversations with them, who do not acknowledge that you have anything important to say, who bully women verbally and psychologically, who never fail to remind you that nothing you do is good enough for them (and of course they know exactly what you should do to better yourself). You might think that they don’t exist in 2020, but they do. They are the men who know best—ALWAYS. They know what is best for you, what you SHOULD do, who become ill-tempered or directly angry when you don’t agree with them or follow their 'advice'. They are the men who berate you for your opinions, privately or in front of others (preferably in front of others so that they look powerful and you are humiliated). They are the men who compete with you instead of supporting you as mentors. They are the men who will offer support but only when they are interested in you sexually. They are the men who make rude, nasty, or sexually-tinged remarks, the ones who think they are being funny by doing so. They are the powerful men who hold others down, women and men alike. They are the ones who work behind the scenes to keep others down, freeze others out, and destroy others’ careers if they challenge them in any way. They are the ones who pull the strings; others should just dance to their tune like the good puppets they think others are.

I want liberty and justice for all. I don’t want a continual war between the sexes, but I don’t want women to surrender in all situations just to keep the peace and to preserve relationships. Some marriages should end, rightfully so, if women and children are treated badly/abused by their husbands and fathers. There is no point in preserving such marriages, and no reason for society to support abusive patriarchy at all costs. This type of patriarchy destroys lives and costs society a lot—abused children need a lot of support to get past the trauma of their early lives, so that they do not grow up to perpetuate the pattern of abuse. Patriarchy may have served a purpose at one time, although I’m not sure what that was. That was a time when men ruled society and women and children were considered to be their property. In modern Western societies, women and children are no longer the property of men, but some of the subtle patriarchal attitudes remain in the workplace and in personal life. Why are there still discussions and surveys about who does the most housework in the home? If both husband and wife work full-time, they should be sharing the chores equally. That brings me back to my father; after a long day at work and the commute home from Manhattan to the suburbs, he had a nap before dinner, and then his evenings were spent focused on us before we went to bed. He made sure we did our homework, quizzed us for tomorrow’s tests, and helped us with different subjects. By the time we went to bed, he had perhaps an hour to read a good book before he ended up asleep in his chair. That was my dad. He enjoyed spending time with his children; he wasn’t constantly running off to pursue this or that hobby, and he didn’t complain about that, nor did my mother. Many of my friends had fathers who behaved similarly; they know their fathers loved them. So not all men who grew up in patriarchal times behaved the way they were expected to behave; not all of them bought into the hype that success meant sacrificing your family on the altar of money, greed, arrogance and betrayal.

Reflections on pride

I've always pondered this--the idea of pride being one of the seven deadly sins. Pride in one's appearance, in one's intellectual acumen, in one's success--cannot be a bad thing, and I don't think this type of pride is what is being referred to. Or I think that one can distinguish between good pride (for example in the things above), and bad pride. Bad pride can be defined as an excess of pride, for example, pride in one's appearance can spill over into vanity and narcissism, pride in one's intellectual acumen can become an attitude of 'know-it-all' (besserwisser), and pride in one's success can become hubris. Hubris is excessive pride, foolish pride, arrogance. Hubris tells others that your worth, your intelligence, and your wellbeing are more important than theirs. Hubris is a feeling of superiority, of haughtiness, that leads you to treat others as less important than you. Carried to an extreme, it can lead to indifference to others (why should I care about them since they are not worthy of my attention) or to abuse of others (for the same reason--others are less or not important). Hubris leads people to selfishness because the only people who matter are themselves.

Christian literature is not always clear about such distinctions. For example, we are told 'not to hide our light under a bushel basket', which I interpret to mean that one should not hide one's God-given talents behind a sense of false humility. We should be proud of our talents and gifts; each of us has unique talents and gifts that should make us proud. So false humility is as bad as excessive pride in my book. If you hide your talents, you deprive the world of them, and they could have helped the world become a better place. If you are a good writer, artist, actress, and you touch people's lives because of these talents and have a sense of pride about that, that is a good thing, not a bad thing. The bad thing would be to pretend you were talentless in the name of humility. But excessive pride leads one to think that one's talents supersede those of others, that without you the world would fall apart, that you are what holds it all together. If we are talented and gifted, we come to a point when we realize that those talents and gifts were supported and nurtured by others, behind the scenes. We are born with talents and work hard at developing them, but our home/school environments also contribute to their development and evolution. In other words, we are part of a team of supporters--family, teachers, coaches--who nurture and challenge us to be better. Excessive pride leads us to believe that we have accomplished what we have accomplished, by ourselves. That leads us to conclude that we know best, that we do not really need others, and that leads to arrogance and indifference toward others.

Things money can't buy

My fervent wish is that the idiots and assholes of the world who think that money can buy everything, would understand this and take it to heart. The problem is that they won't, and the world will continue on its road toward obliteration. Because if it's not a nuclear war that will end life in the world as we know it, it will be nature's revenge on us in the form of a pandemic or plague or extreme weather conditions, for our abuse of this planet in the name of greed (the incessant need for more money).

The same goes for those who are obsessed with power, who think that power and pushing people around can create a better world. Harassment and abuse have never led to anything good. Unfortunately, wealth and power often go together, and it's not a good mixture.


 

Fascinating blog post from NY State Parks and Historic Sites

I subscribe to their blog, and this post appeared in my emails yesterday. I wanted to share it with you. It's entitled 'Growing the Future in Gilded Age Greenhouses'
https://nystateparks.blog/2020/01/21/growing-the-future-in-gilded-age-greenhouses/#like-8286

Visiting the Sonnenberg area of NY State and these greenhouses is on my bucket list. I'll have to save it for when I have more time to spend in NY State (when I'm retired, in other words!).

Anything having to do with gardens, plants, seeds, greenhouses, state parks, conservation and preservation hooks me immediately and makes me happy. Reading about this today made my day. It helps to obliterate all the bad and depressing news in the world.

A winter garden

It has been a mild winter this year in Oslo, and I'm not complaining. Temperatures have hovered around the 40 degree F mark, and even when we've had days when they've dipped to freezing followed by snow, the temperatures rise again, it rains, and the snow disappears. These are the winters I like, and I hope there are more of them in the coming years. 

I visited the garden this morning after mass. A beautiful sunny day...... I was the only one in the garden except for the birds, who were merrily chirping as though it was already spring. They were out en masse, as were the crows, seagulls, and magpies. And on my walk home, the ducks were out also. Yes, ducks. The mallards have returned to the water pools at Alexander Kiellands plass, and they were having a great time. 

It was nice to be back in the garden; there was frost on the grass and on the leaves of the perennials that are just waiting to bloom anew once spring comes. It can't come too soon for my taste. My fervent hope for the coming garden season is that it won't rain as much as it did last year. Too much rain is not good for a garden, just as too little rain is not good either. 

Feeling invisible

I've been reflecting on the dynamics that occur in conversations between men and women, either personal conversations between two people of the opposite sex or in mixed-gender social settings. The personal conversations that I can comment on are those I've had, or those that women friends of mine have had that they have commented on to me. In social settings, I am an active participant in the general conversations about society, politics, and work, but at one recent gathering, I stopped talking toward the end of the evening and just observed the people in the room. It was interesting to intuit the dynamics present in the room. During the early part of the evening, I observed an egalitarian interflow of ideas and comments between men and women, but toward the end of the evening it changed, and I'm not sure why, perhaps because the men let down their guard more? Perhaps because the topics of conversation became more serious? It is this change in dynamics that interested me as an observer and as a woman. The thing that struck me was that the men did not follow up on the women's opinions and thoughts, not in the same way as they did with the men present. Their comments and in-depth talk were mostly aimed at the other men. Perhaps this was the case simply because they felt more comfortable discussing with men because it is a generational thing--most of the men are in their early sixties or older. It can be a generational thing--that men are more preoccupied with impressing (and possibly competing with) the other men in the room as has so often been the case through the centuries, so that listening to women is an afterthought and not a priority. I liked all of the men in the room, so my observations have nothing to do with not liking them. It's just that it felt as though they were accommodating women's opinions without agreeing with or sanctioning them, and they did not follow up on women's comments, or if they did, they did so in a dominating way which is a sure way to end a conversation. In other words, they did not engage further, and it felt as though that was a deliberate choice. It made me wonder if this was because they do not consider women to be as important as they are (generational?). I have never felt that way in conversation with men who are thirty or forty years younger than the men at this gathering. It is a strange way to feel, and the reason I felt that way is because I did not feel comfortable after a while expressing my opinions, and I noticed one other woman give up the fight to be heard as well. What happens is that you open your mouth to comment on a particular topic of interest, and you are suddenly overridden by a man who does not listen to your comments or wait until you finish speaking before he jumps in with his opinion or thought in a dominating overriding fashion. Or you open your mouth and your comment is ignored--essentially, not followed up. The fight to be heard is a question of how to deal with this type of behaviour from some of the men in the room. I noticed that the women were much more likely to listen to the men's comments and to let them finish talking before they commented. It felt strange to me, and at some point, it felt as though women were unwanted, even invisible. I may be overreacting, but the feeling was strong. Some male work colleagues over a certain age also behave in this way, whereas I rarely have that feeling with the women I converse with, which tells me that I have been lucky with my choice of female friends and female work colleagues with whom I converse. It makes me sad that men can dismiss women in this way, even though I know that it has gone on for centuries. It also makes me sad to think that perhaps this is another price that women have to pay for growing older in our society, that they are expected to know their place, take it, and be happy with it (sit down and be quiet). My mother used to say that getting older made her feel invisible. I share her view. But then ask me what she didn't do. The answer is--write in order to become visible.

Reflections on the new year so far

Since the new year started, the world has continued its downward spiral into chaos. Whether we end up in true chaos remains to be seen. Of course, one can look at it the other way--that everything that has happened is business as usual, or politics as usual. Who can say? Since the beginning of January, the American president took out a high-ranking Iranian general, Iran responded by bombing American military bases in Iraq, Iran's military shot down a commercial plane carrying innocent passengers using two missiles and killing all onboard, Iran withdrew from its nuclear treaty, there have been several earthquakes in Puerto Rico of all places, hurricanes along the English coast, Australia's bushfires are out of control and it's estimated that a billion animals have died in addition to nearly twenty-five people, Meghan and Harry (Megxit) have seceded from the British monarchy in order to pursue independent lives, the push for impeachment of the American president continues, 2020 is an election year for the American presidency, leading most to wonder how impeachment proceedings will affect election activities during the year, one of Norway's prominent young writers/artists who committed suicide on Christmas Day was buried on January 3rd in one of the saddest and rawest funeral services I have witnessed on national TV, climate change continues to dominate global conversations (as well it should), top companies in the USA and in Norway are having economic problems/going bankrupt leading them to close stores nationwide and lay off many people. And the list goes on. It's as though all the world's loans and bills 'came due' simultaneously, meaning that we now have to pay back and pay out in full for our greed and foolishness and ostrich-like behaviour.

We cannot afford to keep our heads stuck in the sand any longer. We cannot shove the problems before us for the next generation to solve. Greed has caused so many problems, globalism likewise. The quest for greater profits, large company mergers, global solutions for what should be national solutions, global expansion at all costs in the name of profit, is killing the world slowly. Respect for the life around us has taken a back seat. We cannot continue on this path.

I have talked to many people, young and middle-aged, about these problems, and most agree that we need to change the way we live our lives. It doesn't have to be dramatic, but if everyone does their part, there will be noticeable change on a global scale. We can start by living simpler lives, walking and exercising more, eating less (and cutting down on meat consumption), buying less food and not throwing it away when it is unused, buying what we need instead of buying impulsively, watching less TV, not buying new cell phones and new cars every year or every other year, repairing appliances instead of tossing them (this also means that companies must step up to the plate and do their part to manufacture appliances that last longer than five years, in other words, they need to eliminate built-in obsolescence in the name of profit). We can cut down/eliminate our use of plastic bags, and try not to buy bottled water (although this means that community water purification systems have to function optimally at all times in order to provide drinkable tap water). We need national healthcare in the USA that is affordable and equitable for all. We need to elect politicians who think this way, who are interested in preserving the planet, who are not hypocrites when it comes to how they live, who are service-oriented and kind people. We need more Jimmy and Rosalynn Carters, who have spent their retirement years building homes for others, not just thinking of themselves or traveling around the country lecturing and earning millions for their lectures so that they can buy fancy homes. We need politicians who are willing to serve and to inspire their constituents. We need more respect for others and less argumentativeness, we need more service-oriented attitudes and less self-entitlement, we need more generosity and less greed, we need more kindness and less bullying and hate talk. We need to get on the same page in order to solve the problems in front of us; the solutions are not black and white. We cannot rely on religion to show us the way, because many religions have their own internal problems to solve first before they can preach to their followers about how they should live. In short, we cannot wait for others to show us how to live; the changes must come from us, from the grassroots, and move upward. It should not take a world war or a pandemic to force us into the action necessary to change us and to save our planet.

Adjusting to continuous change

This coming year promises a good number of changes in my workplace. Most of them will be physical, in the sense that they involve physically moving several research groups and equipment from one floor to another floor in our building. That was decided a while ago, but as always, it takes a while for changes to be effectuated. The physical move will happen in March. Those research groups remaining behind will be sharing lab space with the routine functions and services in my department; those functions and services need more room, so the next major change and adjustment will involve how we share that space, how we discuss our needs amicably and find a solution that works for everyone. The reality however is that there is not nearly enough space for everyone, so some people are bound to be less satisfied than others with the agreed-upon solution.

Even if you decided to never actively adapt and change, to remain 'the same as you always were', you would never achieve that. Nothing stands still; all aspects of life and of work life change and will force themselves upon you. That is the nature of life. We are constantly adjusting to change, and it is best to stay open to change rather than fight it. The way research was done thirty years ago and the way it is done now are quite different. Thirty years ago it seemed as though everything about academic research science was more stable; now it seems more like big business that changes strategy every two to three years in order to maximize profits. When the daily stability of research life disappeared, it was difficult to adjust to that. After all, we were brought up on the idea that research needed stability, constancy, in order to thrive. In the 1990s, it was possible to work on one research project for ten years; you could get funding for one topic, e.g. apoptosis and cancer, and you had the time to experiment and to try new research plans. That is harder, if not impossible, nowadays; scientists change their research directions every three or four years in order to follow the trends of funding. Just in the cancer field alone, molecular genetics and genomics were trendy in the 1990s, as was apoptosis and cell death generally, then in the 2000s came cellular senescence, inflammation and its role in cancer, the search for cures for breast and prostate cancers, and the focus on many new and exciting techniques/technologies like microarray gene expression, RNA interference, knockout mice, and CRISPR. Immunotherapy to treat cancers has dominated research science for the past five or so years. So if you want funding and a career in academic science, you follow the current trends. That is what the younger scientists have learned; some of the older ones still fight against this reality.

It was easier to understand your role in a lab setting years ago--as a technician, PhD student, or postdoc. You knew you could rely on a group leader to guide you, and that group leader was often your mentor if you were a PhD student or postdoc. There were not multiple mentors as there are now. Your PhD years were not micromanaged by universities the way they are now. Thirty years ago the idea that you could be the lone scientist in the lab was encouraged; nowadays it is discouraged in favour of working as a team. If you want to work as an individual rather than in a team, if you want to promote and try out your own ideas, you are considered to be a non-team player, and that is anathema at present. The infrastructure of research science has also changed considerably; we share our workdays with IT personnel, administrators, middle-managers, accountants, among others. They were more behind the scenes thirty years ago. You won't get very far these days without the infrastructure of science. If you need lab consumables, you must deal with administrators and accounting people, because you are no longer allowed to order items on your own. You are no longer allowed to download any computer programs on your own; that is taken care of for you by the IT department, and the power they have to deny or approve specific programs can determine what may or may not get done in a research project.  

Academic science is big business now, with huge grant awards going to a small number of recipients. Those recipients often lead large research groups, e.g. centers of excellence. These large groups collaborate at the national and international levels with other large groups. Small research groups (four or five people) without national and international collaborators are not funded and eventually die away. That is the current strategy. If you don't like big business, you won't enjoy academic research science now. If you're young and you know this, the best thing you can do is to adjust your life accordingly--find another arena in which to use your talents and to shine. 

A new year of lovely days

My new year's wishes for my readers--a new year filled with 'lovely days'. Each of us has to find our own way to make our days lovely; there is no one way to achieve that. But one way to start is by remaining open to life and to people and all they offer, each day. And by finding that part of ourselves that stands apart from the societal pressures to conform, to stop thinking, to stop appreciating all the good that surrounds us. Happy New Year!

Lovely Day

Bill Withers, Studio Rio

When I wake up in the morning, love
And the sunlight hurts my eyes
And something without warning, love
Bears heavy on my mind

Then I look at you
And the world's alright with me
Just one look at you
And I know it's gonna be
A lovely day
A lovely day

When the day that lies ahead of me
Seems impossible to face
When someone else instead of me
Always seems to know the way

Then I look at you
And the world's alright with me
Just one look at you
And I know it's gonna be
A lovely day
A lovely day

When the day that lies ahead of me
Seems impossible to face
When someone else instead of me
Always seems to know the way

Then I look at you
And the world's alright with me
Just one look at you
And I know it's gonna be
A lovely day
A lovely day

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: William Harrison Withers Jr. / Skip Scarborough

Lovely Day lyrics © Warner Chappell Music, Inc, Golden Withers Music