Hit by a Car

I was recently hit by a car when crossing the street in Davis, California. This explains why I haven't posted anything on this blog this month until now (late in the month) and why I may be slower to post next month too. I'm sure I will have much more to say about this at a later date, but for now, for legal reasons, this is all I can say.

Halfway through Fourth Year

I realized that I hadn't written anything broadly about my progress through the PhD program in a while, so I should do that now. I'm halfway through the fourth year of the program, and this year has allowed me to take on more responsibilities compared to last academic year.

For one, I'm now doing more projects than I was last year. In particular, last year, my main focus was on fleshing out a way to combine atomistic and continuum treatments of electrodynamic response in order to understand van der Waals interactions among molecules and larger bodies (which was the subject of my second paper). I did a bit of work on the side extending this to situations where the molecules may deform, and while that work still hasn't been published yet, it was not particularly difficult to understand what was going on there given the broader picture of mesoscopic van der Waals interactions. In any case, I was able to basically focus on one major project whose path and end goal seemed fairly well-defined, and as a result, I was able to take things a bit easier. By contrast, right now I'm working on two parallel projects incorporating vibrational effects into this description of molecular response and seeing how that affects the van der Waals interactions as well as heat transfer between molecules. This required quite a bit more formulation and writing & testing code on my part, and featured significantly more uncertainty in the results, because while the basic formulation of van der Waals interactions between molecules and macroscopic bodies for my previous project could be relatively easily extrapolated from our collaborators' description of interactions among molecules alone (and the resulting physical interactions were relatively more predictable), I wasn't really sure what to expect with respect to the modification of these interactions due to vibrations, nor what to expect for heat transfer or thermal emission at all; this is because as far as I can tell, other people haven't really considered molecular vibrations in such a context in an ab-initio manner thus far. Thus, I've felt like in terms of research, I have a lot more work and more uncertainty on my plate now than I did a year ago.

For another, I was a TA for the first time last semester and am a TA again this semester. This semester is turning out to be particularly interesting in that regard, because while last semester I was a TA for a graduate-level quantum mechanics class where I could basically count on students knowing what they were doing and not needing me to hold their hands at every obstacle, this semester I am a TA for a freshman-level linear algebra class that is being taught as an engineering class for the first time; not only am I assisting with a class for which the curriculum is being developed afresh, but this class has a diverse group of freshman who are from less-resourced schools and may have less formal math and science background than some of their peers here, so beyond ensuring that I be an effective pedagog for freshmen, I now have to make sure that I can connect with these students by making myself feel inclusive rather than forbidding.

Most broadly, I now have to think more seriously about what I want to do after I graduate, as that point comes nearer. The big question is whether I want to stay in academia or not, given both the locations where I may find interesting opportunities and the nature of such opportunities. For a while, I thought that I would more likely want to leave academia given the tough odds of finding a tenured faculty position in a place that I would like to be, so I at least thought of doing an internship this coming summer outside of academia. While I still haven't ruled out the latter idea, I have come to realize that I enjoy academic research enough to consider continuing it for at least a few years after graduation, and I've also realized that it isn't necessarily a good choice to try to divine my career many years in the future based on my assessment of my current research progress, as that future becomes less certain the farther away it is. Given that, I also feel like a summer internship could disrupt the pace of my current research, so I would want to engage in it if I could be reasonably sure that it would actually help with my current research. However, if I forswear a summer internship to focus on my current research, then I have to really make sure that I fully investigate my options following graduation; for example, I have a few ideas on research topics to pursue following graduation, but I have no idea how feasible they are because they're in an adjacent field with which I have essentially no experience, so I need to get to know people in that field and make those connections to facilitate my next move. I'm going to the 2018 APS March Meeting next week, so with the uncertainty about my research projects & directions in the short- & long-terms along with the need to more seriously network with researchers in the field, this upcoming conference does feel like it has higher stakes for me than the one I went to last year, when I wasn't as worried about such things.

Such seems to be the course of research in a PhD. I'm glad that I've been able to take up these responsibilities and become a more well-rounded researcher & educator, and the uncertainty of research is gratifying to the extent that I get to investigate different ideas with the chance to fail and improve further in the hopes that I will ultimately hit upon something successful. However, the flip side of that uncertainty is stress when I realize that I have to deliver in some way, whether that means making a good impression & networking effectively at a conference or seriously considering upcoming career moves (where I again would have to make a good impression upon whoever may be evaluating me for a job). Ultimately, my hope is that I can continue to work hard & stay focused on what I need to do without letting that stress and uncertainty cloud my decision-making in the hope that my hard work will pay off, in the same way that in my second year, when I was stressed about my slow research progress relative to some of my peers, I simply pressed on and was eventually rewarded (through the fruit of my labor) with a publication at the beginning of my third year; even if that payoff doesn't come in the way that I expect, my hope is also that by that point, I will have cast a wide enough net that other options will be available to me too.

Book Review: "Genius at Play" by Siobhan Roberts

I've recently been able to read the book Genius at Play by Siobhan Roberts. It is a biography of John Conway from his high school days onward, covering a lot of his work on group theory, symmetries, number theory, and other fields; it does discuss the Game of Life but goes deeper into drawing out the evolution of his response to being solely associated with it, from joy to despair to resigned ambivalence. It also goes through various episodes in his personal life, and frequently switches between narrating recollections of past events and narrating the current events surrounding those recollections themselves. It shows what a whimsical, joyful, carefree, and gregarious man he has been when it comes to math, but while much of the middle section of the book makes this seem like his core personality, the beginning parts about him reinventing his personality after high school, the middle parts about others' (particularly Stephen Wolfram's) characterizations of him, and the end parts about his own feelings about it now (as an older man) make clear that the carefree part of his nature has been more of a facade to cope with his own ego & attendant insecurities.

I really enjoyed this book's progression through his life. It allowed me to once again experience the joys of seeing seemingly inconsequential math ideas that are easy to introduce but hard to truly explain to broad lay audiences, like I did in middle school with my fascination with numbers like pi and the golden ratio and the really random places they pop up. Plus, that juvenile whimsy combined with the human interest in reading about John Conway as a person, as well as my more mature recent interest in deeper philosophical questions, like the physical reality of mathematical theorems (whether they are invented by humans or discovered from the course of nature), or the nature of free will at the human versus subatomic quantum scales. The writing of this book really seemed reflective of John Conway's whimsical and sometimes scattered personality as well as of the people and environment surrounding him, painting a vivid picture of the man in context; I appreciated this to the same extent that I did Robert Kanigel doing the same for Ramanujan in The Man Who Knew Infinity, though in the latter case, Ramanujan seemed to be a rather shy person for whom information had to be gleaned from other sources (also because Kanigel wrote that biography many decades after Ramanujan's death), so Kanigel successfully painted the picture of the people and environment in India and the UK that shaped Ramanujan's personality and the course of his life. Overall, this was a really enjoyable book that went by quickly despite its length. Perhaps people who are slightly more acquainted with the basics of higher-level mathematics may enjoy it more than laypeople (and I would probably enjoy it more if I knew more math); nevertheless, I think the storytelling is quite engaging and accessible to a broad audience. Follow the jump to see a couple other brief thoughts.

Random Thoughts about the Affordable Care Act

Unless you have been living under a rock these days, you know that this week, the United States Supreme Court ruled (5-4) in favor of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), more popularly known as "Obamacare". What shocked everybody was that Chief Justice John Roberts was in the majority of that ruling. Basically, he and other Justices reinterpreted the clause about the ACA mandating the purchase of health insurance as being a tax rather than forced commerce. In addition, the only major setback to the ACA was the striking down of the clause saying (if I understand this correctly) that states must expand Medicaid coverage to cover low-income people who would otherwise be unable to afford the mandated insurance or else forgo funding for health care entirely. (Please note that I am not anything close to a legal scholar. The following constitutes little more than random mumbling, so you don't have to take it for more than that.)

Health Care Reform as of 25 August 2009

Things I heard on the radio and read online yesterday about health care reform included how Taiwan and Australia got through health care reform and made health care available to everyone at a low cost.
In Taiwan, apparently, doctors don't get paid nearly as much as they do here. There, they are ordinary middle class citizens (like many would otherwise want to be here) who just want to make a decent living for them and their family and help their patients out. They don't require driving a Mercedes-Benz S-Class or owning a villa in the countryside as a summer home. At the same time, medical school there has only a nominal fee, compared to the exorbitant (>$50000) yearly prices here. They modeled their system after Canada's and the liberal party pushed it as a moral obligation as Taiwan has become a rich country and thus must bring up its poor people too. The conservative party initially resisted it (though not as strongly as Republicans do here) but saw resistance as futile due to increasing push from the liberal party; in fact, the plan got so popular that the conservative party later on tried to take credit for the plan by fully supporting it. Essentially the same thing happened in Australia. Both countries have national health care plans to provide for all citizens decent care.
I wish it could happen that way in the US as well, but it probably won't. The Republican Party is too vocal and too united for it to happen; it appalls me how powerful the party is and how it can make us look like such a backwards country at times. Furthermore, all of the planted protesters at town hall meetings are supposed to gain some sort of publicity for the GOP and thus make it look like that level of dissent is present in the entire country.
It saddens me that Obama is willing to do not the right thing by forcing the issue of a public option but the expedient thing by brushing off the idea to placate his political opponents. Hopefully once some groundwork is lain for a national health care system a public option can again come to the forefront of the debate.

Really, Madame Palin?

The latest news from Sarah Palin's mouth is that Section 1233 of bill HR 3200 (please correct me on the numbers and/or terminology if they are wrong) calls for "death panels" in which ill or disabled people must stand before a set of government experts (among whom may be President Obama himself) to determine whether or not they will be able to continue living (by having or not having access to life-saving medications, machines, or other treatments).
Now, I am no expert on health care. I know SQUAT about it. You definitely know more about it than me. That's why I'm keeping this rant short.
That said, I did read the section in question, and the part that Ms. Palin characterized as mandating "death squads" actually says that if patients at or above age 65 choose to consult with a physician every 5 years or so about end-of-life medical services, then it must be covered under Medicare. There's no mandate involved unless the patient so chooses. It isn't really a mandate at all.
Here's the thing: Sarah Palin (as far as I could understand, because it was (no sarcasm here) truly tough to parse her resignation speech) decided to quit because she felt it would further Alaska, and by extension, America. The best I could make is that she felt that she could be more constructive and helpful outside of a government position. This seems to be true insofar as she can make more speeches and be more outspoken about her views now that she is technically a private citizen. However, she and other Republicans have not been constructive at all in this debate. Democrats are trying to put together an honest effort at fixing the system, and while it's far from perfect, it's also much better than the status quo. Even conservative "Blue Dog" Democrats genuinely want to fix the system, but their main concern is keeping costs down, which is totally understandable. Republicans, on the other hand, have no interest whatsoever in anything except loyally opposing any Democratic proposal, and this includes Ms. Palin. They know their position is not substantiated in any way, so all they can do is hurl insults and other epithets at the opponents. My question to those Republicans who claim to want reform is, aside from blindly opposing Obama, what would you do? Their answers probably wouldn't please me, but what would displease me more is them dodging the question.
If anyone remembers their mid-19th century US history, they would remember the history of the formation of the Republican Party, which at the time of its formation was the ideological equivalent of today's liberal Democratic Party (Blue Dogs notwithstanding). The Whigs were fading into obscurity and the Democrats were becoming more conservative; this meant that there had to be (under the Constitution and the system it has created which has essentially mandated only 2 major parties) a major relevant liberal party to compete with the conservative Democrats. Most Whigs became Republicans as the Whig party itself faded from existence, and liberal Democrats quickly became Republicans. I figure a somewhat similar thing will happen to the Democratic Party. The Republican Party has become so conservative that it is no longer ideologically or practically relevant, while the Democratic Party has expanded to include many ideologies ranging from very liberal to moderate/slightly conservative (as opposed to the Republican Party which consists simply of extreme conservatives). The moderate/conservative wing of the Democratic Party has had a lot of splits with the more mainstream liberal Democrats, probably necessitating in the future a permanent split. Thus, the Republican Party can once again include the moderates that it has badly needed.
Here's the other big problem: Sarah Palin continually rails against the very media she uses to communicate her rants. Yes, she has every right to say what she does, and I will not vote for a law that prohibits speech of her kind even if I am completely repulsed by it. However, others also have a right to not listen; they are not obligated to listen to her, and that is true of the media as well. So long as the media keep featuring her as front page news articles or top-of-the-program TV segments, she will retain relevance. Only when they start to ignore her will she lose the relevance she never deserved in the first place. This may be a bit extreme, but is it any wonder that the media do not cover KKK meetings/rallies unless they turn violent? Sarah Palin is not a hate group, but her ideas are getting awfully close to it.
On a side note, regarding all of the supposed discontent and shout-downs at rallies held by members of Congress, can any of the supporters explain to me why the demographics of the opponents look suspiciously more white on the whole than the communities in general where such events (the shout-downs, not the rallies) are occurring? Basically, it's not actual discontent/unease (because if it was, the multiple polls on approval for the health care plan would be much lower) but simply a series of (admittedly well-)orchestrated attempts to make Obama look bad. I have a feeling that the manufactured anger is going to backfire and make Republicans look bad, even though there are myriad issues with the current reform proposal.
Oops, that was a bit longer than I thought it would be. My bad!