Knotty Stuff

It's a beautiful Sunday morning. I'm sitting at the dining room table admist the partial wreckage of the Sunday papers -- three quarters of the way through the Post, haven't started the Times yet. There's a gentle breeze billowing the curtains in the kitchen, and I can hear my neighbor building a fence that will enclose the pool that's going to be installed in June. Things are good.

I've been reading a couple of challenging books lately -- one on networks and society, and one, a tensely-written mystery -- and I've enjoyed it. I don't get enough reading done. I most often read The Economist, and thanks to a friend's gift, I am still reading MIT's Technology Review magazine (I had let it lapse, because it seems to be searching for a focus, but when its good, its very good). I'd like to read more. When I'm in a new bookstore I go to check out their magazines, but I rarely find anything that speaks to me as well as what I've got. But I keep looking.

Speaking of looking, we're looking for some software to control access to Internet Explorer. At the moment, we're relying on a password to the PC to keep my daughter from booting up at will, but that's not the best solution. I'm a little surprised that IE doesn't offer a boot password of its own, or customizable authority levels, as XP does. But until Bill G gets around to thinking that that's worth while, we'll look for alternatives. I had actually tried Firefox for a while, and it was okay, but I bailed when I realized that the bookmarks folder function in FF couldn't contain actual files, as IE's can. I have several text files embedded in the Favorites folder, and they're pretty useful, so until FF can handle that, we'll stick with IE. Yes, I realize that what what I'm doing is essentially choosing convenience over security.

This morning, I went to the local supermarket to pick up the papers. Before I got out of the car, I glanced over to the passenger seat and noticed one of my daughter's library books under mine. I was returning Courting Justice (its a pretty good book so long as you can handle the subtext, which seems to be that lawyers care not so much for ideology as for the cases that sound interesting), and she was returning The Report Card. I leafed through it, and ended up sitting in the parking lot for another twenty minutes, reading the book to the end. I liked it, and I liked realizing that my daughter and I have similar tastes in books. When I got home, I made sure to tell her that I really liked a book that she had picked out, because it was true, and because I like boosting her ego. Its important to me that she get that message -- that she has tastes that matter, that her opinion matters, that she can handle difficult or skewed topics. My model is the daughter of a friend, who's just graduating from MIT now, and might go to Harvard Med. I don't necessarily want that for her, but that level of achievement, yes, and I think it starts with believing that you can -- being able to reject the popular 'but she's just a girl' image.

Sometimes, maybe, I push it, like when we were trying to unknot a string (we were taking Distinguished Duck out for another swim) and I told her about the mathematical concept of topology. It was reaching, but when I see the chance to casually mention a difficult concept to her, I do it. I want her to think that every concept is knowable, even if just at a conceptual level. Its important to me that she not think she has any limit except natural ability.

I didn't mention that I personally know almost nothing about topology.

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Ten minutes after I wrote that, my daughter informed us that she no longer had the goal of doing well in school. She did not enjoy the resulting conversation.