(no subject)

[dr_tectonic]

Saturday: At noon, we and Kate zipped up to Longmont to support Jen (who teaches ballet) and her son Michael (who's learning ballet) at a dance recital. I'm happy to say that the bits involving people I know were quite nice. I asked Jen afterwards and she said that the choreography that she did for the four-year-olds did, in fact, involve the phrase "spaz out". As for the rest of it... lordy. I'll just say that the phrase that most leapt to mind was "highly inappropriate". Sexy hip-hop dances by second-graders? Not okay.

Ghostwalk was fun. Joe made mind-blowing amounts of sushi for dinner, and it was tasty. Yummmm. Plus, we had an attack plan that involved summoning celestial monkeys to distract the fire-breathing kobolds, and it worked like a charm.

Sunday: Bummed around in the morning, hung out with Joneses in the evening for Nick's birthday BBQ. We got to see Shawn & Danielle and Malachi Osiris, who is just about the most cheerful baby I've ever seen. (Which is all ironical and stuff given his father.)

Today I got a two-week reprieve on using my project in an actual class. And a haircut.

Oh -- I also finished Earth, by David Brin, which is a good book. Optimistically gritty view of the near future with copious amounts of gaia theory in it. Hand-wavy in spots, but forgivably so because I liked where he went.

Comments

[djmrswhite.livejournal.com]

whats hilarious about sexy dancing from second graders is that they have no idea that it's sexy. they just see it on tv and think all that wiggling looks fun. britney spears, to them, isn't a white-trash slut, she's just sparkly.

[stowellian.livejournal.com]

what means "hand wavy"? It sounds like a phrase I'd like to steal, but I'd like to know hwo to use it first.

[k8cre8.livejournal.com]

What's sad, is that the teachers/choreographers *should* know, and have the sense to choose appropriate moves, costumes and music. I'm very grateful that the kids *didn't* know.

[goobermunch.livejournal.com]

Hand-waviness is something with which you, as a professor to freshmen, are well acquainted.

See, here's my thesis. It's a good solid thesis. It might even be correct. Sure there might be these problems, but . . . oh, and look at me wave my hands at them. This clearly proves my thesis. My conclusion is unassailable.

Hand wavy.

--G

[stowellian.livejournal.com]

so "hand-wavy" = proof by gesticulation (and therefore of somewhat doubtful believability)?

[dr-tectonic.livejournal.com]

Yeah, pretty much.

In this particular instance, I was using it to refer to some bits of the book where the explanation of how something worked was kinda vague (as opposed to explained by technobabble/fictional science or just not explained at all, both of which are perfectly valid techniques in SF).

[arcticturtle.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I knew a four-year old girl who danced/sang the whole "stop right there" Britney video, by heart, compulsively, continuously. Actually, she was 70/30 cute/disturbing - I've never seen the original don't know if she was blessedly (but no doubt accidentally) leaving out suggestive parts.

[ocschwar.livejournal.com]

The ghost of Neal Postman just gave you a knowing nod.

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

Handwaving is sometimes not entirely bad--another version of handwaving is conference talks where everyone is basically familiar with the proof techniques used in an area.

So a handwavy proof there can be of form "First, do this, and then that, and then you wind up in this form; that's basically set up for use of the Thrombozz inequality, except that you have to prove a pretty simple lemma kind of like the one that Sapyang used in '98, except that the initial conditoins are slightly different."

People nod, and don't worry about it, because they're not nearly as interested with that part of the proof.

[joebehrsandiego.livejournal.com]

I'm a Brin fan myself, it's always cool when a hard scientist finds the talent and desire to write sci-fi as well.

Have you read any of Kim Stanley Robinson's work?

[dr-tectonic.livejournal.com]

One of the things I really like about Brin's books are that the worlds are usually complicated, with lots of different things going on all at once, just like the real world.

I read KSR's Mars books. My usual comment about them is that I found them compellingly believable in terms of the future history -- they really feel like that's how it will have been. I just wish that ANY of the characters had been even remotely normal/sane...

[joebehrsandiego.livejournal.com]

I agree that the characters in the Mars Trilogy are pretty movie/tv-series-ish. I think his character development was much improved in 'The Years of Rice and Salt' (another good read).