Dear Dave
Wednesday, 16 December 2009
Physics for parents
Dear Dave,When I first told people I was going to be a dad, many of them said that my world would change. I nodded and smiled. Of course it would change - that was obvious! I simply didn't appreciate, however, how the very fabric of space and time would be ripped and folded around me by the arrival of a small child. With hindsight, I might have been a little more cautious. I certainly would have gone to the cinema more often while I had the chance.
Perhaps if the people I spoke to had had some hard evidence, I might have listened...
That's the problem, though. Up until now, warnings about parenthood have always been riddled with anecdotes and hearsay. In an effort to rectify the situation, and after much experimentation, I've produced the following empirical data to prove that becoming a parent does indeed alter the very laws of physics in a severely world-changing fashion in the surrounding vicinity:
So remember, next time you meet a prospective dad who's oblivious to what the future holds, show him this. He still may not believe you but, down the line, at least he'll know what's happened when time starts running in circles and the contents of his fridge keep disappearing down a wormhole into another dimension...
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed. Thoughts? Responses? Got a funny story about your children? Add your comment here. 9:20 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post
Friday, 26 June 2009
It could be worse than Terminators
Dear Dave,Never build an intelligent computer.
It's bound to end badly. The exact details of the disaster are hard to predict - the thing might shove you out an airlock, start World War III, imprison you in the Matrix or send an unstoppable robot back in time to kill you - but whatever form catastrophe takes, it's unlikely to be a happy experience. I know this from watching movies, so it must be true...
Thankfully, judging by the utter stupidity of most of the computers I have to deal with in daily life, the rise of the machines is still a long way off. It's certainly far enough in the future to make the possibility of a zombie outbreak a more pressing concern in the short to medium-term than the evolution of Skynet. (Remember: Stock up on chainsaws not armour-piercing bullets.) I mean, if the military really had had a computer capable of playing WarGames with Matthew Broderick in 1983, I'm sure most of the technology would have filtered out into civilian life by now. We should have been having philosophical conversations on the futility of nuclear war with our laptops long ago.
Instead, we have automated, voice-recognition call centres. These give us four options for our customer enquiry, none of which is right, and then pick one at random whatever we say anyway. I encountered a system recently which didn't even have an option to go back to the previous question. When it misheard 'Report a Problem' as 'Billing', I was stuck in a sub-menu dealing with statements, direct debits and Visa cards with no way to escape. I had to hang up and start again.
If that computer ever becomes self-aware and tries to take over the world, I can't see it getting very far.
The armed forces probably do have better artificial intelligence than that but I doubt it's great. Even if they're fifteen years ahead of everything else, the Gulf War must have been full of incidents like this:
Skynet (Beta): Thank you for calling Central Command. Please state your name, rank and serial number.
Soldier: Pulse R., General, 5559781.
Skynet: Good day, Sergeant Pul. Please state the second and fourth numbers of your PIN.
Soldier: No, that's not right.
Skynet: I'm sorry, your PIN has not been recognised. Please repeat your name, rank and serial number, remembering to speak slowly and clearly. If you are in an area of high background noise, you may need to change location.
Soldier (over gunfire): Erm... I've what?
Skynet: Good day, Private Erm. Please state the first and third numbers of your PIN.
Soldier: Just put me through to an operator.
Skynet: I'm sorry, I didn't understand that. Would you like me to put you through to an operator?
Soldier: Yes.
Skynet: In order to ensure you are sent directly to the most appropriate member of our highly-trained staff, please state the nature of your request. Do you wish to make an enquiry about your most recent pay slip, log a fault pertaining to essential equipment, report a sighting of a Weapon of Mass Destruction or request an air strike?
Soldier: I need an air strike right now!
Skynet: All our operatives in the accounts department are currently busy. Please hold for assistance. (There's a click and classical music starts to play.) Thank you for your patience. Your call is important to us...
Things are doubtless more sophisticated than this these days, but if the army has Terminator robots then there's a good chance they could be out-foxed by hiding behind a newspaper, wearing a false nose and moustache or speaking in a very bad French accent. A mildly rutted field or a little light foliage would also be liable to make them stumble over and lie on the ground waving their limbs in the air (for the five or six minutes it took for their batteries to run out).
Nope, I don't think we have anything to worry about from anyone attempting to build a brilliantly clever super computer for a while yet. It's simply too hard.
I did find a far more worrying line of research in the technology section of a local museum, however. It was from a project in the Seventies where programmers worked on developing a computer as intelligent as a five-year-old child. There wasn't much to see other than a robotic arm which played Draughts clumsily but the very idea was almost as frightening as turning a corner to encounter a group of suspiciously grey-skinned people groaning about brains.
The coders were either hugely ambitious or had never met a five-year-old child. Five-year-olds are pretty smart. They may not be able to play Draughts well but they can be cunning, observant and empathetic, not to mention sly, scheming and manipulative. They can outwit adults with ease.
The lack of realism in the project's goal was scary. The truly terrifying part, though, was the thought of what would have happened if, after thirty years, they'd finally succeeded. With that level of cluelessness, the researchers might well have hooked the thing up to the Disney website for a little play while they went out for a couple of drinks to celebrate. Unfortunately, by the time they stumbled back to the lab wearing sparkly, cone-shaped hats and drunkenly blowing tooters, we'd all have been doomed.
Imagine a five-year-old connected directly into the world's networks. Rather than being hunted down by metallic warriors with glowing red eyes, the human race would starve to death as global production was switched from food to bubble mixture, balloons and all the plastic tat you find in the bottom of party bags. Adults would be forced to work all day as slaves, pushing small children on swings and roundabouts. There would be nothing on TV which didn't involve talking animals.
Gibber...
Humanity clearly had a lucky escape when the project ran out of funding decades ago. Nonetheless, just to make sure, I snuck back to the museum after dark and dropped the whole exhibit into a bubbling vat of liquid steel.
You can't be too careful, after all.
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
PS Never mind five-year-olds, even a four-year-old can be ruthlessly logical and devastatingly astute:
Marie was being awkward on Saturday. She wanted to go to the shops with Sarah but wasn't willing to put any effort into getting dressed. She made a big fuss about the effort involved with pulling on each piece of clothing, and had to stop for a rest every few seconds. Then, when I went to rub on her eczema cream, she started dancing. Everything was a struggle.
"Could you be good for Mummy today?" I said, not wanting Sarah to have to put up with this kind of behaviour for hours at the shopping centre. "Do what she says and don't argue with her the whole time."
I immediately realised the chances of Marie going along with this were small, so I decided to give her something easy to agree to, so we could work up from there. "Be nice, and reply properly when she asks you a question. Don't just stamp your foot or say, 'Bah!'"
Marie hung her head and pouted.
"Come on," I said. "How hard can it be to not say, 'Bah!'?"
She screwed up her face and seemed on the point of tears.
"What's the matter?"
"But," sobbed Marie, "she might ask me what noise a sheep makes!"
Somehow, I went from telling her what to do, to having to give her a mint to cheer her up. She was all smiles by the time she left the house - not because she'd acquiesced to be good but more because she knew she'd won yet another victory.
Bah.
At least the robots would be quick... Thoughts? Responses? Got a funny story about your children? Add your comment here. 9:30 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post
Friday, 12 June 2009
Parental precognition
Dear Dave,That's shocking.
I mean, how thoughtless. Some people really have no consideration for others, do they? You must be devastated...
I seriously can't believe your parents have arranged to be busy the entire school summer holidays. Couldn't their once-in-a-lifetime cruise wait until September, for example? If not, I'm sure the visiting cousins from Australia could have been persuaded to postpone until Christmas. And as for the week giving respite care to terminally ill, blind donkeys...
I guess you're going to have to take your kids with you when you go away this year. No more lying quietly on the sand, soaking up the sun, for you. You'll be running around kicking a ball, collecting shells in a bucket and changing nappies full of beach as well as poo. The closest thing you'll get to a rest is being buried alive by an over-enthusiastic toddler with a sharp spade. Enjoy.
You might be as well staying closer to home and finding somewhere with an activity club and creche facilities. Forget about proximity to art galleries, vineyards, intriguing shops and night life - you're a parent. The first thing you need to ask about a hotel is whether it has a softplay.
It's just another example of how life has changed. There's not much you can do really. File it in that mental list of stuff you're simply going to have to put up with until the children leave home. You know, like not getting enough sleep and being unable to cross the road unless there's a green man. Before you become too distraught about your loss of freedom, however, remember that parenthood does have its advantages. (Besides supplying a selection of adorable little munchkins who'll grow up to push your wheelchair around in your declining years.) For instance, now I'm a dad, I can see the future.
It's true. I only need one look at a situation and I can tell exactly what the outcome is going to be. Take what happened on Sunday: At church, Marie was delighted to find some sparkly beads on the floor and, as we headed home, she bounced along, clutching them in her hand. With my paternal sixth sense, I had a very clear vision of what was going to happen next...
"Keep them in your pocket or you'll lose them," I said, trying to avert the disaster I'd foreseen.
Unfortunately, Marie wasn't having any of it. "I'm holding onto them really tight."
"That's as maybe but..."
I didn't get a chance to prophesy further because we bumped into an old friend I hadn't seen for a long time. I was suddenly busy explaining where I've been for the last ten years while still trying to stop the boys from wrestling next to a busy road.
After a couple of minutes, Fraser shouted, "There's a key here!"
He was right. It was balanced on top of a low wall next to the pavement.
"Someone must have found it and put it there," I said, "so whoever dropped it will be able to find it."
"OK," said Fraser. Both boys immediately started wrestling at the same time as attempting to climb the wall within inches of where the key was precariously placed. My special powers kicked in again.
"Don't jump around next to it. If you knock it over into that garden, it really will be lost."
They started to argue that they weren't that close, all the while waving their elbows around right next to the key. I ordered them away from the wall. They argued some more and then ran off behind me.
I turned back to my conversation but Marie started to cry.
"Lewis bumped me and made me drop my beads!"
On further questioning, it transpired that she couldn't recall how many beads there were, what they looked like or exactly where she'd been standing when they fell out of her hand. Nonetheless, she was inconsolable.
I sighed.
Then all of us began crawling around on the pavement, searching for an unknown number of minuscule beads of indeterminate colour. Well, nearly all - the friend suddenly remembered an urgent appointment elsewhere...
Somehow the whole thing was both inevitable and unavoidable. Having parental precognition is all very well but there are only so many times I can tell the kids off for stuff they haven't done yet before it becomes oppressive. I don't want to live in my own little version of Minority Report.
I suppose it might be better to relax, let the predictable disasters happen and then encourage the kids to learn from their mistakes.
Actually, no, I tried that. If I don't warn them of impending catastrophe, I'm the one who ends up having to clean the dog poo off their shoes, bandage their wounds and/or explain to their teacher why their homework smells of curdled milk. Worse than that, I have scientist children. They know that merely because something went terribly wrong last time, it doesn't necessarily mean the same thing will happen again next time. They have to verify the results.
Then they have to do it a few more times just to make sure.
When I first became a dad, I didn't see that coming. It's very tiring. I could maybe do with a holiday lying quietly on the sand, soaking up the sun.
Oh...
Drat.
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
Labels: children, housedad, science
Thoughts? Responses? Got a funny story about your children? Add your comment here. 9:30 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post
Wednesday, 1 October 2008
Black holes and birthday parties
Dear Dave,"You're late," I said, opening the door and letting Mostly Useless Dad, Steve, into the house.
"Sorry," he replied with a big grin on his face, not seeming sorry at all. "Alistair wanted to talk and I couldn't get away."
I didn't have time to ask who Alistair was or why Steve was wearing a suit. He'd told me he needed me to look after his children because he 'had some things to do'. I'd simply assumed a trip to the shops and a little light DIY. I certainly hadn't expected him to be gone so long.
"You only left one nappy," I said as four-year-old Ophelia ran into the hall to hug him and Josquin (who's almost two now) toddled along behind.
He gave them both a somewhat distracted pat on the head. "You have plenty," he said over their clamouring squeals of 'Daddy!'.
"No, we don't. Marie's four! She hasn't worn nappies for a year and a half."
"Really? She's four?"
I pointed to the big, pink poster above the kitchen door. It read, 'Happy 4th Birthday, Marie!'.
"Yes," I said. "No nappies. I had to sit Josquin in the bath for ten minutes while Sarah nipped along the road and borrowed a couple from neighbours."
"Borrowed!? They want them back?"
"Of course they don't want them back. I mean..." I noticed he was smirking. I suddenly realised that, for a change, he wasn't being completely clueless. "Hang on, that was a joke, wasn't it?" He was in an awfully good mood. "Where have you been? Your mobile was off. I... Never mind. We don't have time right now. Tell me on the way."
In return for looking after his kids all morning, he was giving me a lift to Marie's birthday party. Since there weren't enough seats in the car, Sarah had taken our children on the bus. I, meanwhile, was in charge of the stuff: sandwiches, paper plates, little bottles of juice for the kids, plastic cups and cartons of juice for the adults, cake, candles, matches, knife, chocolate buttons, wipes, CD player, CDs, parcel to be passed, cocktail sausages, crisps, more crisps, a vast assortment of tack to put in party bags, party bags, balloons, grapes, chopped carrot, more chocolate, prizes and two handheld games consoles (to keep the boys quiet).
Steve strapped Josquin and Ophelia in while I loaded my two large laundry tubs of party supplies into the boot. The car noticeably sagged as I did so. I ran back to the house to check I hadn't forgotten anything, then locked up and hurried to climb into the passenger seat. I slammed the door and we were away.
We were hugely behind schedule and I was hoping for a screech of tyres and the smell of burning rubber. Sensibly, however, Steve pulled cautiously away from the kerb and headed off slowly, looking for a place to turn round.
Some loud, piercing birdsong erupted from my pocket.
Steve swerved slightly. "What the...?"
"It's my phone, sorry," I apologised. "It has to be loud enough for me to hear over three children and traffic." I had a text message. It was from Scary Karen. She was worried about the Large Hadron Collider again.
"Anything important?"
"Karen thinks one of her children may have swallowed a miniature black hole," I said, scrolling through the message. "She wants to know whether she should call CERN."
"Er... Is that possible?"
"Not really but I already tried explaining the physics to her the other day when she thought she'd got one trapped in the oven. I think I may have gone a little too technical with my explanation of singularities, gravity wells and event horizons because she still wouldn't go near the kitchen. Her family had to live on Pot Noodles for three days until I told her that half an hour on Gas Mark 3 would make the thing safe."
"Uh-huh," said Steve, laughing nervously, unsure exactly how much to believe.
I suspected his knowledge of physics wasn't large. As a quick test, I asked him the standard question, "If you stood on the moon and let go of a pen, would it float where it was, float off or fall to the moon's surface?"
"What? Er... Float off?" he said, frowning and clearly unsure.
I gave him a second chance. "Then why didn't the Apollo astronauts fly away whenever they tried to walk anywhere?"
"Oh," he said, his confidence returning. "They were wearing heavy boots. Everyone knows that." He grinned at me like I was an idiot for asking him something so obvious.
"Hmmm... Yes..." I said, refraining from screaming at him because I knew he was a lost cause. "Your oven is larger than Karen's. You'll need to put it on for an hour if you ever have any concerns."
Steve nodded seriously. "That's good to know."
I texted Karen back, telling her there was nothing to worry about but that I'd check both her boys out at the party to make sure. Then I remembered what I'd really been meaning to ask Steve.
"So... Where were you on a Saturday morning that required a suit and no children?" This simply wasn't normal housedad behaviour.
"I bumped into an old school friend in town a month ago. Hadn't seen each other for ages and arranged to play golf. We got on rather well. Turns out he runs his own business consultancy firm and they're looking for someone new. He offered me an interview."
I was incredulous. "On a Saturday?"
"He's been busy with clients all week. You know how it is - sometimes the work has to be done and everything else takes a backseat."
"We're in the backseat, Daddy!" called Ophelia from behind us.
"That's not what I meant, dear," said Steve, even though, in some sense, it very much was.
"How did it go?" I asked.
"I don't have anything in writing yet but he's as good as given it to me. He wants me to go back on Wednesday and meet the rest of the team. Can you take Josquin over lunch?"
He was probably expecting some form of congratulation but all I could manage was, "Does Deborah know?" I found it hard to imagine she was thrilled. (Deborah's not a fan of putting the kids in childcare but, with her interior design business doing so well, she's not likely to want to go back to being a housemum, either.)
"Haven't had a chance to tell her," said Steve. "She's away at some conference or other. That's why I needed you to watch the children."
"She knew about the interview, though, right?"
Steve looked shifty.
I held my head in my hands. "You took a job that Deborah didn't even know you'd applied for?"
"Well, as I said, I don't have anything in writing yet but..."
"You're a dead man." I felt like a Jedi Master returning home to find my young padawan using the Force to propel cute puppies into space. I wanted to grab him by the shoulders and yell, "Have I taught you nothing?"
He was still driving, though, so I decided against it. I merely sighed deeply. It appears that despite his child-wrangling skills having improved greatly in the year since he was made redundant, he really hasn't come to terms with parenthood. He's still a middle-manager in slightly soiled housedad clothing. Put him back in a suit and nothing's changed.
"So, can you take Josquin on Wednesday?" asked Useless Dad.
"I suppose..." I muttered. "But don't think I'm going to take him fifty hours a week so you can pretend to the wife you're carting him to the zoo every day when you're really sloping off to further your career."
As we pulled up at the party venue, Steve looked faintly disappointed.
We were late. I unloaded the stuff and hurried into the building while Steve followed behind with his kids. Sarah gave me a look as we arrived but I merely shrugged and rolled my eyes and shook my head in the direction of Useless Dad and then set to work helping supervise children. We'd booked the use of a small soft-play for an hour. It was a maelstrom of plastic slides, brightly coloured balls and little girls wearing sparkly clothing.
Marie was unwrapping her presents and stacking them on a table by the door. Various parents at nursery had come up to her over the previous week and asked her what kind of things she liked. On every occasion, she had replied, "Pink things." As a result, the pile of gifts was a eclectic mix of fairy costumes, dolls, craft sets and clothing. It was, however, almost uniformly the colour of candy-floss. Marie was delighted. She squealed with pleasure every time she opened a parcel.
This was quite a contrast from Fraser's fourth birthday party. We had to stop him halfway through his presents because of the constant stream of complaining. "I don't like Power Rangers... What's this? I'm not going to play with that... Oh, it's only a jigsaw... Lewis can have these... This is OK but we've got two already... We can sell that..." Lewis was the same. They've had to open their parcels at home ever since...
Marie's friends were having fun in the soft-play. Several parents had stuck around to help out and chat, which was good - it's always useful to have a few extra pairs of hands available to deal with accidents and toilet runs.
The boys grabbed their computer games from me and disappeared up a corner to play. We didn't let them in the soft-play because they're so big now. They'd have squashed Marie's petite associates or, worse, tried to take charge of them. Fraser attempted that at Lewis' party a couple of years ago and the younger children didn't take kindly to being told what to do, ambushing him in the ball-swamp and then sitting on him. It didn't go well.
The hour passed quickly and with little incident. Scary Karen brought her kids over to me and I looked down their throats and gently prodded their tummies before giving them a clean bill of health. Karen didn't seem convinced, so I took a set of magnets that Marie had been given and waved the things around a bit, looked at my watch carefully and scribbled down some calculations. Then I checked her boys' balance by getting them to stand on one leg and hop. I reassured Karen again after that and she was a lot happier. She gave Marie her present.
It was a pink, sparkly garden gnome princess (complete with pink, sparkly beard).
Marie was genuinely ecstatic.
When our session was up in the soft-play, we got to go through to a side room for food and games. While Sarah oversaw Pass the Parcel, Karen and Steve helped me hurriedly fling plates and refreshments and party blowers onto the tables. Then we had half an hour of relative peace during which exhausted children ignored the sandwiches and concentrated on eating chocolate.
Just as the sugar started to kick in, parents began turning up to collect their offspring. We did the cake and finished off with a quick game of Musical Statues while I and my helpers shoveled debris into bin bags. Marie handed party bags around and we were out the door barely in time for the staff to clean up for the next booking. It was all a mad rush in the end. Somehow we blinked and found ourselves in the car park, thankfully waving goodbye to a horde of tired, crotchety, buzzed children.
We could breathe again.
"Ready to go?" asked Steve.
I bundled the stuff into his car but it was Sarah's turn to get a lift. Marie wanted to go with her and, fortunately, I'd brought a spare booster seat to cope with the situation. A great deal of strapping and buckling ensued. I gently broke the news to the boys that we were going to walk home in order to make sure they got some exercise. They weren't happy. I phased out their whinging, though - Steve was looking pensive.
"You're not going to tell Deborah, are you?" he said.
It took me a moment to remember what he was talking about. A couple of hours of children's party had taken its toll.
I shook my head. "I don't need to. You have a daughter who's nearly five. Deborah will know everything within ten minutes of arriving home. You'd be best getting your version in first."
Fear crossed Steve's face as he considered all the things that Ophelia could both understand and say and thus use to incriminate him. It was a lot of things. Strangely, the possibility of independent and reasoned thought by his kids didn't seem to have occurred to him before. "Oh."
"Children are people, too," I said. Then I got another text. It was Karen wanting to know what noises would precede the world being eaten by a black hole, so she'd hear it coming and have a bit of warning to put on clean underwear.
Trying not to ponder that too carefully (for oh so many reasons), I waved Steve and the others goodbye and set off down the road, dragging the boys behind me.
I was very much looking forward to getting home and having a lie down.
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
Labels: Scary Karen, science, Useless Dad
Thoughts? Responses? Got a funny story about your children? Add your comment here. 9:30 AM - Permanent Link - 2 comments - Post comment - Links to this post
Wednesday, 17 September 2008
Maths & Maturity
Dear Dave,I've forgotten more maths than most people ever learn.
Once upon a time, I could utilise vector calculus, execute Fourier transforms and do all kinds of wizardry armed only with a pencil, paper and a selection of Greek letters. Using the four years of knowledge I accumulated studying for my physics degree, I could prove any number of theorems involving everything from electro-magnetism to the motion of stars. Some of these calculations involved assuming that the Earth is flat, others that it's a perfect sphere and a select few required both assumptions, a steady hand and a touch of dark magic.
Happily, my physics skillz were such that I didn't get confused and accidentally make time run backwards or anything unfortunate like that. (That happened down the corridor once. Three of my mates lost a minus sign somewhere, found themselves in 1985, nearly erased their own existences by convincing their younger selves to get trendy haircuts and unwittingly ended up inventing Back to the Future. It was messy.)
That was a long time ago. Now my maths is a little rusty. Basic trigonometry is a struggle.
"That's a right angle," I said, pointing to one corner of a tangle of straight lines in my nephew Ned's homework book. He was sitting at our kitchen table, his head in his hands, trying to solve the problem by sheer force of squinting at it.
Somewhere else in the house, there was a shriek and a thud.
"Everyone OK?" I called up the stairs to the lounge.
"Yes!" called back Lewis, as if surprised I was asking. "Yes," sighed Fraser, seemingly bored by having to give even that much of an answer.
There was a pause. "No," whimpered Marie. "The sofa was bad. It made me fall over."
"Er..." I said, contemplating going to check on them. "Are you all right, though?"
"Yes," she groaned. "I'll put the stool back now."
"Good," I said, deciding it was best not to know what she was talking about. "Be careful. I'll be up in a few minutes."
"OK," muttered Lewis and Marie in unison. Fraser didn't reply. Since this was a better response rate than normal, I left them to it and went back to the kitchen.
"I don't get it," said Ned, now squinting so hard it had to be making his forehead hurt. "How's it a right angle?"
I picked up a pencil and added a couple more lines to the tangle. "Does that help?"
He leant in close to the page, staring at the diagram, his nose almost touching the paper. "No," he said.
"Ah," I said, resisting the urge to yell, "It's totally obviously a right angle. Are you blind?" I felt that might not be too helpful. Besides, if he concentrated any harder, his eyes would clamp shut and his brain would shoot out his ears. I pointed elsewhere on the diagram. "It's a right angle because this is a right angle."
"How's that?" he said, one eye closing as he peered where I'd indicated.
I stood behind him with a couple of mugs, ready to catch any grey matter that tried to abandon ship. "It says so in the question. Those lines are perpendicular."
"What's that mean?"
"That it's a right angle."
"Oh..."
It was slow going but we persevered. Ned has rather strong motivation in that his dad's going to pack him off to a remote, military-style boarding school if his science grades don't improve. They'll make him take a cold shower and then force him to do algebra while being chased over the moors by a pack of Alsatians. Having me tutor him might be painful but it has to be better than that. He's not stupid. He simply can't seem to get to grips with equations.
We finished the question and took a break while I checked on the kids. The boys were playing computer games; the girl was filling a Little Mermaid sleeping bag with balloons while wearing two dozen items of pink, sparkly jewellery. I made a mental note to talk to them about gender stereotypes later and then sneaked back downstairs before they noticed I was there.
"What's the point of maths?" said Ned when I returned. He'd found the biscuit tin and was busy emptying it.
I grabbed a chocolate digestive while there was still time and considered the question. At a certain level, maths is vital to understanding the working of the universe. I couldn't really see Ned ever reaching that level, however. At another level, it's the basis of engineering, construction and making Lara Croft wobble in a pleasing fashion. I felt Ned could appreciate these applications but, again, they were likely to always be beyond him. He wasn't so much asking about the uses of maths, he was wondering what any of them had to do with him.
A practical demonstration was in order.
I reached into the pile of our recent mail and pulled out a credit card bill, intending to hand it over and ask, "Why do we pay this off in full each month rather than making the minimum payment?" Then I realised that:
- (a) It had my credit card number on it.
- (b) It listed a large purchase from HMV which he was bound to query.
I played it safe and gave him a mortgage statement instead. "Why are we paying this over fifteen years rather than twenty-five, even though the monthly payments are much larger that way?" I asked.
Ned screwed up his face. "'Cos it's done quicker?"
"Yeah... and?"
"Dunno."
"That's the point of maths," I said, circling some relevant numbers. "Try and figure out how much it costs in total interest over the different lengths of time."
Glumly, Ned set to work.
I suddenly felt horribly mature. I was forcing him to learn about mortgages. Normally we talk about computer games or films or I listen to him complain about his parents. We're close to being equals in those conversations. I'm nearly twenty years older than him but I'm more than ten years younger than his dad, Chris. I can often relate to Ned more easily than my sister-in-law's husband. Frankly, I usually choose too. I like to think of myself as the not-totally-uncool uncle.
Discussing compound interest didn't sit well with this image. I may wear the same style of clothes I wore in 1997 and they may, in a few instances, even be the same clothes, but it's becoming harder to disguise the fact I'm getting old.
I wonder how Ned actually sees me?
In first year at university, I did a theology course out of a mix of interest and a need to fill a gap in my timetable. It was full of mature students - middle-aged people who'd gone back to university to expand their minds and change the direction of their lives. (This was in contrast to the rest of us who were there to have a good time for four years while putting off giving our lives direction.) As such, they did all kinds of annoying things like read books, prepare for seminars and complain that the word limit for essays was too small.
The physics department didn't have many mature students. Maths is enlightening, beautiful and important. Unfortunately, it's also hard to follow and full of Greek letters. It's not ideal for discussing while drinking coffee in street cafés. (When mathematicians try it, waiters berate them about the diagrams sketched on the table with marker pen and natives of Bohemia laugh at their poor dress sense and ignorance of social conventions.) Few people get to a certain age, decide they don't like the way they're headed and think to themselves, 'Yes, I see it now! My life simply doesn't contain enough maths...'
In fact, we had just the one older student. He had a sign taped to the door of his room which read, 'Within lies the difference between age and maturity.' In general, he blended in with the eighteen-year-olds around him. Only the wrinkles and a touch of sense gave him away.
Another month and I'll be thirty-five, which is roughly the age he was at the time. I don't imagine I'd blend quite so well, however. The kids have blown it for me. On the one hand, I'd be telling the teenagers to look where they were going and to eat their food nicely. On the other, I'd be intimidated by their energy and confidence.
In some ways, I feel less mature than I did when I was a teenager. After Fraser arrived, I was sent a handbook on being a parent. I'm still waiting for the one on being an adult.
As we did sums, I thought about asking Ned his opinion of me but I didn't dare. I preferred to hang onto my not-totally-uncool illusions. That level of communication is probably beyond him for now, anyway. He'd have grunted something non-committal and then hoped for a change of subject. If I'd forced him to come up with a proper answer, the squinting would have caused permanent damage to his eyebrows and I'd definitely have needed those mugs.
We struggled with the mortgage calculations. They were harder than I was expecting and I'm not sure we got them right. Nevertheless they gave some idea of the huge pile of cash that my bank won't be getting. Ned was impressed by the number but he still wasn't convinced about his need for maths. Somehow, he knew that we'd have been much quicker logging on to a financial services website and using one of their widgets.
"Isn't this on the internet?" he said.
I was tired and my patience was wearing thin. (I've become crotchety in my old age.) "Yes," I snapped, "but someone has to write the internet, other people need to be able to point out their mistakes in great detail, someone else needs to blame the government, yet more people need to blame immigrants, someone needs to correct their grammar, others need to blame the government for immigrants and you need to know why they're all wrong and escape before the Star Trek fans arrive."
"Er..."
I took a deep breath. We'd made some progress but there was no point pushing it. "Biscuit?" I said, finding another packet. It was time to call it a day. "Played any good games recently?"
Before he could reply, there was another shriek and thump from upstairs. "The sofa's being bad again, Daddy!" yelled Marie. "Come and tell it to stop."
I headed to investigate, nonchalantly shoving an entire chocolate digestive in my mouth in one go as I went. Ned looked on in awe - there's no way his dad would ever do anything like that. It may not have been exactly cool but it wasn't totally uncool either. His reaction gave me hope that I can come across as mature without merely seeming old.
I didn't let on that the only reason I hadn't eaten the biscuit normally was to avoid making crumbs.
Still, maybe I haven't entirely turned into a grumpy, shrivelled husk yet. Maybe I can keep the balance between age and maturity for another year, and hold off on a mid-life crisis until Marie's at school. With the rest I'll get then, I might be able to avoid one altogether.
This would be for the best. Who knows what might happen otherwise?
With my luck, I might decide my life simply doesn't contain enough maths.
I'm not sure I'm ready for that...
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed. Thoughts? Responses? Got a funny story about your children? Add your comment here. 11:00 AM - Permanent Link - 2 comments - Post comment - Links to this post
Friday, 16 May 2008
Cut-price time travelling
Dear Dave,One of the arguments presented against the possibility of time travel is that, if it worked, we'd know about it - we'd have been visited by bus-loads of very smug people from the future by now.
Personally, I think there are a number of reasons why any successful time traveller would try to remain inconspicuous. More than that, they're bound to be very rare, since there's every chance they'd fail to pass on technical details of their discovery. For a start, travelling in time is extremely dangerous. It's well known that time travel almost always ends in being eaten by a dinosaur, enslaved by intelligent chimpanzees or exterminated by a Dalek. None of these outcomes is really conducive to getting scientific papers widely published.
Then there's the issue of paradoxes:
Thanks to Back to the Future, everyone is aware of the unfortunate consequences of chatting up their own mum. These simply aren't worth the happy side-effect of creating rock'n'roll. While this particular situation is easy to anticipate, other kinks in the chain of cause and effect are harder to avoid. For example, anyone who devotes their life to saving a loved one killed in a tragic pogo stick accident is asking for trouble.
What if, after years of expensive and exhausting work, they manage to make that leap back in time and warn their childhood sweetheart not crank up the spring and go for a bounce through the firing range next to the old, abandoned mine by the cliffs? If they avert the disaster, their past self has no reason to toil away inventing a time machine in order to travel back and avert the disaster. Worst case scenario, the entire fabric of the universe unravels like a toddler's knitted sweater snagged at the top of a helter-skelter. At the very least, someone's going to disappear up their own worm-hole.
Again, publications will to be few and far between.
Even if a time traveller were to avoid immediate mishap, there are only two likely uses for a time machine:
- Travelling back in time and betting on the horses.
- Travelling forwards in time and stealing some cool technology.
Yep, anyone who invents a time machine is going to keep it to themselves.
This is annoying because there are all sorts of advantages to living in the past. You don't have to go back that far at all before the music's better, for instance. Go back a little further and you won't have to worry about the environment because you'll be too busy worrying about nuclear Armageddon. Go back far enough and you can impress people with nothing more than a box of matches.
No matter how far you go, however, it's just plain cheaper:
A month after its release, I saw a computer game second-hand for half the original price. I resisted the urge to buy it and waited another couple of months. By then it was that price new and the second-hand price had halved again. Sure, when I took it home, I was playing a game that had been out for three months, but by living only a quarter of a year in the past, I'd made a saving of seventy-five percent.
It's the same with DVDs. One month a film is fifteen quid, the next it's in a 5 for 30 offer. By linking my home cinema via a time-warp directly to 1996, I save a fortune.
Interestingly, though, it's not the case that the further back in time one lives, the greater the saving made. With computer games, there's a point when older games start being harder to find. Really old games can become more expensive again as supply diminishes. With DVDs, the cheap version may be withdrawn in favour of the premium priced Special Edition.
What's the sweet spot? How far in the past is it necessary to live in order to enjoy the best deals?
For computer games, I'd say it's about three years. For DVDs, it's maybe only two. For music, perhaps it's five years but this is going to increase as digital downloads take over. There aren't going to be many CDs of recent music available to buy in the carboot sales of the future. Choice will be limited to the old, decent stuff bought by people like us. (Shame.)
Clothes require a little foresight. It's more complicated than simply popping down to the charity shop and seeing what fits. Very old clothes are cheap but they're likely to be falling apart and have a totally unshiftable smell of grannies about them. Relatively new clothes will be expensive and look remarkably dated. The trick is to buy clothes from ten years ago but then stick them out of harm's way in a cupboard for another five until they come back into fashion again. It's maybe time to pick up some outfits in lime green and bright orange that are going for a song...
As for fresh food, it's a case of living in last week and buying all the items that are marked down because they're rapidly approaching their use-by dates. Of course, the crunchy food will be soft and the soft food will be crunchy, so make sure to purchase a selection and choose recipes which require a variety of ingredients. It will all even out in the end.
Bear these tips in mind and your ears, eyes, mouth and wardrobe will be living in different temporal eras, but you'll save a pile of cash.
Don't tell anyone, though. We can't all do it. Someone's got to be seduced by the hype and pay over the odds for stuff on day of release in order for us to buy it second-hand later. And think of our pensions - if no one feeds the corporate machine, the stock markets will collapse and we're all doomed.
Remember: Time travel - keep it secret.
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
PS We'd all have a Star Trek style holo-deck in our living-rooms if they weren't just as beguiling as time machines. A guy in Pasadena invented the technology years ago. He was going to go next door and tell his neighbour but then he popped into the thing to give it a quick test-drive. That was 1993. It was simply too much fun to come out again. (Of course, he thinks he came out in 2001...)
Labels: computer games, science, stuff
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Wednesday, 23 April 2008
Give them an inch...
Dear Dave,What constitutes a last shot?
That's a tricky question. It's all very well yelling, 'We're going home! Time for one last go!' when you want to leave the swing park but what do you actually mean? Is it one go on everything or a single shot on one thing? What if one child wants a turn on the swings and the other wants to go down the slide? A turn on the swings probably has to be a couple of minutes long to be worth it, so the kid on the slide should be allowed four or five shots to fill the time. Then again, four or five last shots is quite a lot. The kid on the swings is bound to complain that they're only getting one. And that's before they both start wanting a quick spin on the roundabout...
If the weather is nice and you're not desperate for a coffee or the toilet, you may be inclined to humour them but, if thunderclouds or vultures are circling, you may decide to hurry them up. Either way, it's liable to end in tears. Even if you do give them another five goes on the slide, a lengthy shot on the swing and enough time to turn themselves green on the roundabout, there's still a high probability they're going to throw a tantrum as soon as you mention leaving again. Sometimes it's best just to bite the bullet, tell them it's time to go and then go. If you're going to have to carry them off kicking and screaming, you might as well do it before it's started to rain.
Trying to ease through a transition can just prolong the pain. Sometimes a clearly defined and definite decision is the only way. If you're in any doubt, look out the window and try and estimate the distance to the end of the street.
Since, like me, you went to primary school in Britain in the Seventies, I'm guessing you have absolutely no idea how far that is. You're probably not even sure whether to answer in yards or metres. More than that, you know your height in feet but measure things in centimetres. You buy cheese in grams but weigh yourself in stone. Milk comes in pints, petrol comes in gallons and Coke comes in litres.
This is a mess. As far as I can work out, Britain tried to change from imperial to metric units at some point, got halfway through and then everyone who'd grown up with imperial complained that they couldn't be bothered to learn the new system. Concessions were made. We got stuck using both. With all the confusion, I didn't really get taught either.
Given the choice, I'd go for metric. Metric units are a great deal easier to work with than imperial units. I had to do a semester of high school physics in the States and I simply couldn't believe I had to use feet and pounds. It was a nightmare. Still, if I'd been brought up using the system exclusively it would have been second nature and better than the confusing mix I was brought up with. One or the other would have been better than half of each. The Americans did manage to get men to the moon after all.
I, meanwhile, struggle to bake cookies.
Jen over at The Road Less Traveled recently put a picture of some cookies up on her blog. They looked very tasty. She offered to send me some but, worried that Customs would eat them, I asked for the recipe instead. Then, when Fraser had a friend round, I distracted Marie by getting her to make the cookies with me. I imagined an idyllic father-daughter bonding session that had the happy by-product of melt-in-the-mouth chocolate chip goodness. I was prepared for the recipe to be in imperial units. It wasn't an issue. I'm used to chopping and changing between imperial and metric in recipes. 8 oz of flour is roughly 200g. I wasn't expecting to have a problem. I had most of the right ingredients - how badly could it go?
Then I read the recipe and discovered that I didn't need 8 oz of flour. I didn't need 200g... or 300g... or 10 oz... or any other weight. I needed two and a quarter cups.
That's not different units - that's an entire different scheme of measurement. It seems to be standard practice in the States but I didn't know that anyone measured solids by volume (other than Archimedes, of course, and clichéd new neighbours trying to scrounge some sugar).
Under different circumstances, I might have looked up conversion charts online but I already had various potentially laptop-destroying foodstuffs all over the table and an excited child waiting expectantly in an apron. I quickly hunted around and found a measuring vessel marked in cups. Whether these were American or imperial cups, I have no idea, but it was better than nothing. (Americans don't actually use imperial units - they use something closely related but even less wieldy, so all the more credit to them for dominating the world. Having to work in Fahrenheit and fathoms is clearly character building.)
I got Marie to help measure things out. Flour was OK, sugar was easy, but when it came to the butter, well... that wasn't so good. The recipe seemed to acknowledge that measuring butter in a cup wasn't the best plan, however. It happily told me that a cup of butter is equivalent to 'two sticks'. This wasn't all that helpful. I can only assume that a stick of butter is more than a twig and less than a tree but none of this really helped with the cookies. Everything became somewhat less precise at that point. It's hard to imagine anyone doing any lunar exploring using this particular system.
Apollo 13: We've fired the thrusters but we're still off target!
Mission Control: Oh shoot! We figured everything out on the basis you'd be coming back with 513 cups of moon rock. Hang on a minute while we recalculate everything.
Half an hour passes...
Apollo 13: Come on, we're heading to Mars here!
Mission Control: Yeah, yeah, we're working on it. Hey, by the way, do any of you guys know if it's three sticks of basalt per cup or four?
We got there eventually:
I think I may have used half a branch of butter rather than two sticks but the cookies were pretty tasty nonetheless. I made some with nuts and some without but all the children then point-blank refused to eat any of the nutty ones.
Shame.
Munch... Munch, munch...
Anyway, I'm sure it would have been easier if I'd grown up measuring things in cups. Just as I'm sure that my life would have been simpler if some government official in the Seventies had stubbornly decided to ignore the whingers and press on with metrication. If they'd told the European Commission to get lost and gone back to imperial that would have been fine too. Hopefully our kids will only be taught metric but I will probably never know how far it is to the end of the street or be able to estimate how many limbs a bag of Pic'n'Mix is going to cost me before I reach the checkout. ("What do you mean, 'two arms and a leg?' Hang on while I put these Strawberry Laces back...")
Yep, sometimes an easy transition isn't worth it. A clean break is what's needed.
I like to give my children fair warning of where we're going and what we're doing but I've let them wheedle 'another five minutes' or 'one last extra, extra shot' out of me a few too many times. They've come to expect it. Getting them to appreciate that we really have to leave right now is very difficult and tends to involve me having to shout. I've started being much firmer. There's still some shouting involved at present but, if they can learn that when it's time to go, it's time to go, life will be less difficult in the long run. There'll be fewer tears and we'll get soaked less often. Hey, you never know, there may even be more cookies...
Oh, no, my mistake, I've eaten them all. Mmmmmm...
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
Labels: science
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Wednesday, 7 March 2007
What do you mean we're out of wipes?
Dear Dave,We had a family day on Saturday.
Yes, that's right, that's one of those occasions where we drag the kids kicking and screaming away from the TV and computer and force them to have an exciting trip to somewhere cold and wet. This lasts from the moment they've finished their breakfasts until a time well after they were supposed to be in bed and long since they have ceased to be civil. The trauma helps us bond together as a unit and is a good excuse to drink a bottle of wine when it's all over.
On this particular occasion there was a deal where we could buy a special train ticket to Glasgow and then go to lots of attractions for free once we got there. Being cheapskates, this appealed to us and we set off early in order to visit as many places - and thus save as much money - as we possibly could. Of course some of the most expensive things in life are free, and our pockets were steadily drained of cash by cafeterias and giftshops thoughout the day. Still, we saw plenty of things we would never have got round to otherwise.
We ended up at the Science Centre. (The home of Nina and the Neurons, CBeebies fans!)
This is a fantastic place full of hands-on experiments and exhibits but our first concern was grabbing lunch. It was pretty decent. Marie refused everything apart from milk and Hula Hoops but the rest of us tucked in. As usual, though, the boys finished their food before drinking their drinks - their vast, brimming cups of chocolate milk. There are only so many times I can say, "Drink your drinks before they get spilled," without giving up in despair, however. That's something I need to work on. Quite how Fraser managed to launch his beverage container a foot into the air while still creating enough rotational motion to splatter all of us is a mystery.
After we'd cleaned up the mess, I went and got Fraser another chocolate milk and I picked up some fruit for later. He gulped it down and we headed to the vast hall full of wonders. Sarah let the younger kids press buttons until they were bored and then pointed them in the direction of something else. I vainly attempted to explain to Fraser the polarity of magnets, the fundamentals of flight and the propagation of sound. He ignored me, pressed buttons until he was bored and then ran off to find something else. I gave up. I taught him to do a Towers of Hanoi puzzle, added a couple of extra rings made from a key fob and a wrist strap, and sat down for a long rest. A very long rest.
Later we went to the giftshop. It was crammed with brightly-coloured exciting looking things packed full of educational potential. I quickly tried to hide my wallet in my sock but Fraser was too fast. He grabbed a pack of plastic bobbly things.
"Can I get this?"
"What is it?" I asked.
"I don't know."
"How much does it cost?
"Five pounds."
"That's a little expensive for something when you don't even know what it is."
"How about this then?" he said, grabbing a smaller pack of different plastic bobbly things.
"What's that?"
"I don't know."
"How much is it?"
"One pound and fifty pence."
"OK," I sighed. "I guess that's more reasonable. Go and give the money to the man at the till." He went off happily just as Lewis approached, a board game clutched to his chest. From somewhere else in the shop I heard the familiar voice of a little girl scream, "You don't touch it! Pink dinosaur mine!" I sighed again.
We left as closing approached and caught the open-top tour bus (another part of the deal) for a scenic trip back to the station. We all piled upstairs and sat along the back. The boys were starting to wilt and I gave them the fruit to keep them going. This was a mistake. After they'd already gorged themselves, I bit into an apple and discovered it was quite sour. There was nothing wrong with it as such, it was just not very sweet in a way that suggested it might take some concentrated digestion. I suspected it was not really the thing to give two boys prone to travel sickness while they sat on a bus twisting and juddering its way through the Glasgow traffic.
"Are you feeling OK, Fraser?" I asked nervously.
"Yeah," he replied. "Why?"
"No reason," I said. "How about...?" I began turning to Lewis but I was already too late.
Everything happened at once.
My younger son leant over the back railing and spewed mightily, somewhat to the surprise of the cyclist directly behind us. I called down an apology but I had more immediate concerns: the sight and smell of Lewis' titanic chunder had started Fraser gagging. I grabbed the plastic bag containing our souvenirs, emptied it in Sarah's lap and then held it under Fraser's chin. I was barely in time to catch the geyser of chocolate milk which erupted from his mouth and just kept coming. There was so much, and it was under such high pressure, I expected it to spray out his ears at any moment. Then, finally, the seismic activity eased and I sighed in relief - I had caught every drop. I held the bag aloft in triumph.
Unfortunately, it had a hole in the bottom.
I stared at the hole, my eyes wide in horror, and time slowed. The trinkets falling at Sarah's feet hung in the air, I could hear my own heartbeat and I suddenly noticed the warm, damp feeling around my knees. Reality spun round my outstretched arm...
...then snapped back into place. I dumped the bag on the floor and hunted for the wipes. The previous chocolate milk incident had seriously depleted our supplies and a couple of nappy changes had left us very short indeed. We had one left. One wipe to last us nearly two hours. One wipe to see us through over three hundred and fifty child-minutes. That's not a lot of back up. I decided to save it in case of a real disaster and cleaned up as best I could with my scarf. By the time we reached our stop, Fraser and I looked nearly presentable.
We were left with that age-old dilemma of whether to leave the leaking bag of sick on the top deck of the bus or to carry it the full length of the bus, down the stairs and out the door, leaking a trail of sick behind us. Tricky. In the end, I put the bag inside my woolly hat and made a break for it. I hurtled to the door, leapt onto the pavement and barged my way to the nearest bin, the crowd parting before me like the Red Sea before Moses. (Though I doubt he yelled "Let me through! I have a hat full of sick!" to get the job done).
I was tempted to dump the hat with its contents but instead stowed it with my scarf in the net carrier under the buggy, as far from anything else as I could manage.
We cleaned up a bit more in the station and headed home. We'd had a pretty good day, even if some of us did smell faintly of curdled chocolate milk. Marie fell asleep on the way and the boys played with their new toys. I spent most of the journey rescuing multi-coloured bits of plastic from obscure crevices of ScotRail seating. Some of these little gaps were unpleasantly sticky but I did score a two pound coin, a return journey from Falkirk and a Lego Darth Vader complete with light-sabre. Result!
It was extremely chilly when we got back to Edinburgh and by the time we had walked half way home I was freezing. I peered under the buggy in an effort to see if my hat and scarf had gone crusty yet. Sarah rubbed her hands against the cold. "Don't even think about it," she said without even looking at me. Marie was snuggled cosily under a blanket so I stole her pink, fluffy pixie hat and jammed it down on my head. It's possible I may have looked like a lunatic but it's only a real lunatic who walks around with cold ears when they have other options.
It was late. We got home and bundled the kids into bed before putting on a load of washing and settling down in our pyjamas with a bottle of wine and the TiVo remote.
"You did well today," said Sarah as we cuddled up on the sofa.
"You did too."
"Want to go to Dundee next week? I got this leaflet in the Science Centre about... What?"
"More wine..." I muttered. "More wine..."
"Never mind." She kissed me and then poured me another glass. "I'll tell you tomorrow."
"Good idea," I said and reached for the remote. "Now which is it going to be - Vegas, New York or Miami?"
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
Labels: children (vol.1), favourite, science, sickness
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Sunday, 4 March 2007
My children are doomed
Dear Dave,Fraser is very good at maths and has learnt to speak Pokemon. I've been thinking about whether I've turned him into a geek or whether it was just inevitable. I think the answer is probably just 'yes'.
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
Labels: children (vol.1), science
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