Me Being Myself

I just came back from G & D's, the local ice cream place across the street from Somerville. (There are two other locations---both in Oxford---but the one across the street is unsurprisingly the one I always go to.)

Upon entering I noticed a possibly-interesting woman, but then I noticed she was using what appeared to be one of the new (or at least reasonably new) Macintosh computers, and then I found myself to be far more interested in the computer specs than I was in her. What can I say---I have to be me. Then, in another example of me being myself, I immediately sat down somewhere and minded my own business (doing some reading from an issue of Notices of the American Mathematical Society that has been lingering for several months). I laughed internally about the relative importance of these things in my thoughts, and I also quickly understood that I was perfectly at peace with this. I suppose I could do with not being so horribly shy, but I have been able to make some really good friends here, so I'm at least mostly (and sometimes---like today---completely) at peace with that as well.

Making Friends in Oxford

I've been going through another one of my thoughtful phases recently, and I've been pondering the fact that the places in which I have been able to most easily make close friends are first Caltech and now Oxford. I have made a few pretty good friends here, and there is one local with whom I'm especially close who I would put up there with just about anybody I've ever met and as far as I'm concerned is a friend for life. It's also particularly nice for my mental state when I am slaving at work and I get an unexpected knock on my door. The gentle nudging to try to convince me to eat and sleep a little more properly are also much appreciated, and I occasionally even follow that advice. (Our first interaction was kind of interesting, so I certainly wouldn't have predicted this at the time we first met in fall 07. In retrospect, I probably should have, but it's easy to say that.) I know I've been here for about a year and a half now, but Caltech is the only other place where I've met such people on this kind of time scale. (And it's not like I haven't made close friends in other places---my best friend is someone with whom I've been friends for 29 years, and I obviously met him in a different place.)

So then part of the question becomes 'why' have these two places been so good to me in this respect. Obviously, friendships are constrained by opportunity, and I think that's the main key. It probably is true that Caltech and Oxford have more (as a ratio of total people) of the types I like, but it's not like those people don't exist at other places (and I have clearly met several of them in the past). Most of my close friends from Caltech were in Lloyd House and similarly most of my better friends from Oxford are people I know via Somerville. I don't know anybody in the Mathematical Institute that well (it's more of a colleague thing there, though I certainly like my colleagues very much), and I only know one person from the complex systems group at any reasonable level.

The number of good friends I've made here is admittedly smaller than after the same amount of time at Caltech, but I believe that the difference is that back then we were basically all thrown into close living quarters and that is different from my living arrangements here. But here I have excellent opportunities to meet wonderful, interesting people with whom I enjoy spending time. At Cornell and Georgia Tech, I really struggled to do that, and I would literally sometimes go multiple months between going out with other people. (At Berkeley, I just hung out with people I knew from before.) Here I am hanging out with my friends all the time (though, of course, Upper and Lower Crotch haven't been duplicated), so life is good.

I still get moody and even depressed at times, but that's who I am. But a couple of the locals are really looking out for me, so this entry is for you.

(Well, I'm not sure if I phrased my feelings eloquently, but I hope I got the point across.)

Doesn't entirely make sense

I'm a bit confused at the moment. I'm starting to become better friends with some local people. I went to the pub with a couple of them tonight. We hung out and had fun, opened up a bit, and and in general had a good time---and I very much like spending time with these particular people. Yet, I am back in my apartment and I feel a bit depressed at the moment and hope it's mostly because I'm tired. I think it goes go beyond my feelings of at guilt at not having worked on my grant proposal tonight (which is what I had intended to do). I have a thought or two on the matter, but I don't particular want to share them in this space. My thought processes aren't unfamiliar, though I still think that this isn't what my mood should be at the moment. Ah well, I guess I'll do a bit of stuff with my grant proposal because I need to give a new draft tomorrow so that I can get some more feedback.

I also got IMed with a 'thank you' from one of my SURF students because today is apparently 'Thank your mentor day.' I have several people I need to thank, so I think I should e-mail them before I go to bed. That helps my mood. (Actually, blogger was down and I couldn't post this when I first wrote the above. The IM from my student helped my mood a bit, as did sitting down and working a little on my grant proposal (even though I am not going to revise the draft as thoroughly as I'd like---nevertheless, I would like to get some more feedback on it without waiting the 3 weeks I'd need to wait if I didn't send in the new version tomorrow. So I think part of how I am feeling is guilt over the grant proposal, but I think some of it is also the thing that's bugging me that part of me feels very strongly shouldn't be bugging me at all. (I'm really annoyed at myself that I am worrying about what I probably can't have instead of focusing on the good stuff that I can and apparently do have. I really wish I could rewire myself on this.)

What exactly is a tragedy?

I think a decent amount of time has passed since I've made a horribly insensitive comment, so I feel like I may need to break this streak.

I was reading one of my usual baseball venues (Rob Neyer's blog), and he was using Heath Ledger's untimely death (which I hadn't known about until I saw this article) to illustrate his point that the five-year waiting period normally present for a player to be elected to the Hall of Fame is a bad idea. (The comparison was to Ledger having lost out to Hoffman for a "Best Actor" Oscar victory with a speculation that perhaps the voters assumed Ledger would have many more chances given that his career was in its infancy.) Here is what Neyer writes about tragedies in this context:

Reading the message boards, one sees Heath Ledger's death described as a "tragedy."

No doubt. But for whom, exactly? He was someone's son, and the father of a two-year-old daughter. It's tragic for his parents, and for his daughter. In the grand scheme of things, though? Every day there are tragedies that would, if you could figure all the equations, rate larger than this one.

If you think Ledger's death is a tragedy, it's because of how it affects you, not his parents or his daughter. It's because he meant something to you. It's because you found his performance as Ennis Del Mar incredibly affecting and you wanted to see if he'd ever get another role as good. It's because you've been jazzed about seeing his take on The Joker since you first heard about that (presumably) brilliant bit of casting.

Or maybe that's just me. I just know I felt the same yesterday as I do when some long-ago major leaguer has died. It's my tragedy. I don't feel sorry for his wife or his children, or his grandchildren. They're mostly just abstractions in my mind. I feel sorry for me, because Johnny Podres and Tommy Byrne and Gerry Staley were all small-but-important pieces of my life.


I agree with the above sentiments. I have felt something when particular people (actors, baseball players, and so on) I've never met have died, and it essentially has to do with whatever pleasure they have brought to my life (and will no longer bring) because otherwise it's (all else being equal) the same as if it had happened to a random person. Obviously, things are much poignant if it's somebody I know personally (and am presumably fond of). Maybe my ability to empathize with other people is just woefully inadequate (I'm not sure, to be honest), but I think it is possible to simultaneously empathize with the family of somebody who has died way too early and keep the big picture in mind as well. Frankly, I think that most people are way to quick to apply the label of "tragedy" to things that are unfortunate, sad, and so on, but that aren't true tragedies. What that accomplishes is to trivialize real tragedies (of which there are than enough) by elevating things that are perhaps extremely poignant but not at the level of what an actual tragedy is.

While starting this blog entry, the background song "Sound of Silence", which seemed quite appropriate. (After that was "Goodbye-Goodbye", which is a bit livelier and perhaps less appropriate for this entry.) I'll miss Heath Ledger's acting and I do feel some sense of loss after reading this news, but please let's keep a bigger picture in mind.

Anyway, I don't think I've pissed off too many people lately, and I wanted to fill the sudden gap in my life.

Quick Thoughts (I'm Still Standin')

What do you think the plot of the average severity of an injury as a function of the number of syllables in its name looks like qualitatively?

Also, my father (a doctor) is coming by today to look at my eyes. I believe this is to make sure that I didn't suffer a concussion. The police officer mentioned this test to me last night and I realized today that the small talk (asking about one of the books on my shelf and so on) probably had much less to do with his general interest than it did with just seeing if I was alert (i.e., again checking for symptoms of a concussion).

I don't know if I lost consciousness when I was punched. I do know that I can't remember what song was on my iPod at the time. (Though, perhaps ironically, Elton John's "I'm Still Standing" was the next one I was going to pick when I wasn't in the mood to listen to the random selection.)

For what it's worth, the odds weren't good (4-5:1 ... I can't remember if there were 4 or 5 of them). I have nothing to report regarding whether the goods were odd.

P.S. Fists to the head suck! (Mind if I just lie here for a minute?)

P.P.S. Hopefully coming soon: Blog entries that are actually positive in tone.