Aerial refueling?

There is a dessert willow growing in a neighbor's yard that overhangs the wall between us. It's pretty and provides us with some nice daytime shade so I don't grumble about the bits that drop off and land on the artificial turff the last ownerr installed.

Today my wife and I were admiring the new bird feeder when a blossom fell from the tree. A hummingbird perched on the feeder tried to drink from it as fluttered downward. No idea how succesfful the attempt was, but the maneuverability of those birds is breathtaking.

"Foreign" doctors

Members of my household have accumulated a lot of experience with the US medical industry.¹ Just now we have collectively eight specialists across five disciplines (and primary care, of course), and the frequent moves I've subjected my family to have meant finding new people in those (or other) positions repeatedly in the last few decades. We've interviewed many dozens of specialized physicians over the years.²

And I've noticed something about what doctors are available.

Most of the time we get offered appointments in less than a year with two kinds of doctors: people who turn out to be a poor match for us and "foreign" people (meaning people who have a noticeable accent or did part of their training in another country, and often meaning "not white").

Now, to be licensed in this country a doctor needs to do a residency here no matter what credentials they may have elsewhere, so every one of these doctors has been checked out by the local medical establishment (and because we're talking about specialists they have been checked out twice). We've found some of our very best specialists this way. But we've also heard from other members of our communities that they "weren't comfortable" with these same people.

Okay, in one case the physician had a pretty marked accent; one I remember finding pretty hard to process when I first started working with people from the same part of the world.³ I can buy that many residents of that rural and somewhat insular part of America might have found dealing with the accent one problem too many on top of dealing with medical issues. But in most cases these folks have mild accents (presumably owning to spending many years in the States) that merely give their speech an exotic edge.

A strategy

My unscientific conclusion is that some portion of the American public is avoiding a subset of our good doctors for being "not my in-group" (I won't speculate if this is overt racism, implicit racism, or just provincialism) and that means that it's easier for you to get access to those doctors.

The point is that it can be hard to get specialists, especially good specialists, so you don't want to give up any available edge. Don't be put off by an accent or a face of a different shape or color than your own.

Aside on exceptions

We also have very good specialists who are white. And some who are male. And some who are getting on in years. Our current crop includes one who is all three of those things and he's a serious keeper. But we didn't get him by calling the clinic and asking who was available, we asked the specialist at the "from" end of our last more to intervene for us and we got in with this guy on the basis of inter-doctor networking.⁴ That's been the case with a lot of our specialists who look like they came from central casting.

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¹ It wouldn't really be right to call it a "system" except in the sense of "ecosystem". There is no organizing principle, and while many parts of it are subject to oversight of one kind or another the oversight level isn't terrible well coordinated.

² Yes, "interviewed" is the right word. We go into a new specialist's office with the questions "Is this the right doctor?" just as much in mind as the history and needs of the patient. Doctors who want to micromanage a patient used to being part of their own care are a bad match. Doctors who don't want to answer questions when a patient feels they need to know more about 'Why?' are a bad match. Doctors who tell a couple comprised of a graduate engineer and a physics professor "You don't understand the math" actually get laughed at in front of their own staffs (I feel a little sorry about that, but not very; she is, indeed, one of the elite thinkers in our society but dismissing us out of hand was out of line).

³ Much of US graduate education has a lot of diversity in country of origin even when there is not so much in gender, economic background, or race among the Americans. And experimental particle physics is an international endeavor so I got a lot of practice during my years as a scientist.

⁴ This is another strategy. If you ever have to leave a good specialists (for whatever reason) see if they can hook you up with a replacement. They already know your case and your style and may be able to choose a good match. And their influecne can get you in to see doctors who are "not taking new patients at this time".

Neolithic

Image courtesy of wikimedia

I'm taking the position that awk may be a stone aged tool, but like a Clovis point it represents the very finest craftsmanship of that age: simple in form, highly functional, and beautifully constructed with everything it needs for its task and nothing else.

And no, perl is not a better example. Larry bolted everything including the kitchen sink onto it. That certainly made it more functional, but it also made it ugly. I'm not highly conversant with the vast array of choices in the rapid development marketplace, but I would judge that both ruby and python come a lot closer than perl to the goal of being at once all-singing-all-dancing and beautiful. Tcl/tk is right out and I an happy having no basis on which to judge php.

"Rights"

I've been thinking about 'rights' as in "constiutional rights" in the context of mask orders.

Leaving aside the reasonableness of mask orders and the long history of the courts upholding public health measures, I've been wondering in particular about why people might¹ claim there is (or should be) a 'Right' to not wear a mask in a retail establishment.

And I think we should see it, at least in part, as pedictable fallout of a long-running campain from the political left.

I'll explain.

Originalism

It is a common argument on the political right (or at least the political right as it was in my younger days) that 'rights' are something that the people have against the government. That's basically the content of the Bill of Rights, after all: things the government may not do to "the people" or to individual people.² In that view restraints may be imposed on people vis a vis other people by way of laws, but those are different from and limited by 'rights'.

Plenty of newfangled models

But here's the thing. For more than my entire lifetime there have been 'rights' that control how a person may interact with another person.³ A business may not discriminate against a person on the basis of a moderately long list of things, right? Nor is this limited to corporate entities (which recieve privileges from the state), but also applies to a person who is simply doing business with their own money. Similarly a business (i.e. even a person) generally may not discriminate in hiring against a person with a recognized disability nor in most cases forbid some service animals.

Now, I think a pedantic examination would suggest that these aren't 'rights', but rather requirements of the Civil Rights Act in the former case and the American's With Disabilities act in the latter (and various pieces of legislation that have followed) and as such are "laws".⁴ But the narrative I see in the popular press uses 'rights' or 'right' on a regular basis. To the extent that the descriptivists have won the argument over the meaning of words, that's a change in the understanding of what a 'Right' is from the beginning of the republic.

Not that am I terribly worked up about it. I'm strongly in favor of treating people decently whatever their color, gender, religion, etc and even ::shudder:: poltical beliefs or favorite college football team.⁵ And I recognize that a coordinated campaign of "individual" intolerance by the majority is completely asymmetric and every bit as oppresive as legal inequality,⁶ so allowing people to freely discrimiante in their public lives would be little if any movement toward equality. Nor do I think it is reasonable to say to the members of an oppresed minority "Well, I think you're right about this, but you really need to suffer for another couple of generation so that we can have a smoother transition with less friction", which seems to be the alternative.

But it sets the rhetorical stage for the idea that people can have 'rights' to deploy against other people

Right 'Rights' right back

The political right has been getting beat up using this language for roughly sixty years, so it shuoldn't come as a surprise to find that they have decided to retailiate in kind. In this the left have won the cultual wars: the rhetorical weapons of choice have become those the left selected way back before I was born.

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¹ I say "might" because I am just guessing.

² And we'll just not talk about how incredibly wonky it is to have a system that on one hand holds up these shining ideals that people are in many ways more important than governments and on the other lets people be held as property. Denial is not just a big river in Egypt, after all, and even people who try to be rational and principled can suffer from it in startlingly large ways.

³ Here I'm attributing existance to positions held up by the courts and by the Supreme Court in particular. You're welcome to believe (as I do) that some of these are in error, but they are the things that will be enforced for good or for ill.

⁴ Generally the rulings are that the governement may in fact make such a requirement in law.

⁵ "I don't have anything against Buckeyes, but would you want your sibling to marry one?"

⁶ Even if we posit a lack of organized and legally unaddressed violence and intimidation ala Jim Crow (and even if you can belive it starts that way how long do you think it would last in the face of any resistance?).

On toddler fearlessness

Can you get a subscription to the emergency room?

Un-plan for growing up v0.1

When I was growing up there were certain thing my parents "made" me do. I didn't always like it at the time, but looking back on it I'm glad they did it. It gave me a set of skills that have served me very well as I moved into adulthood. Some of those skills like

• cooking
• typing
• navigation in the city or the woods

have been directly applicable to day to day life, but others like

• persevernce through failure
• the conviction that I can learn the basics of almost anything
• the knowledge of what it takes to turn my own suckitude into at least bare competence

are more abstract and perhaps more important.

My folks admitted later on that some of these lessons were consciously thought out (and by implication that some were not), but I also lived what would now be characterized as a "free range" childhood and learned some of them on my own or with my friends.

I think that both the structured and unstructured parts of my childhood have been hugely (and mostly positively) influential on my adult life, and I'd like to give my daughter the same advantages. Towards that end I've been trying to build a plan for what my spouse and I should require and not require of her. My first pass at a list is ... lengthy but not too structured. Hopefully it can be characterized as "ambitious but not suffocating". In any case, I'm sure the child will cause revisions as we go along.

So here it is for posterity:

Things you should do (besides your schooling) while you live at home to a lay a foundation for a good life as a grown-up.

• Learn the tasks of keeping a house. Practice all the things that are part of independent living
  • cooking
  • doing the laundry
  • cleaning various parts of the human environment
  • changing the AC filters, the batteries in the smoke alarms, etc
  You're going to have chores. Petition to have the changed from time to time.
• Practice the arts, get a basic grounding in technique of several kinds
  • Musical performance (vocal or instrumental)
  • Conveying stories and emotional states (acting, prose writing, poetry, dramatic reading, or story telling)
  • Visual arts (drawing, painting, photography, videography, etc)
  and spend a couple of years working on at least one
• Study a foreign language, and use it at least a little. Learn about the (or a) culture that comes with the language.
• Pursue a diverse range of individual skills:
  • Intellectual or technical skills (chess, stage-lighting, cooking, logic, philosophy, audio-mixing, art history, etc)
  • Physical skills (sports, horseback riding, martial arts, mountain biking, etc)
  • Mechanical, building, or programming skills (kitting, carpentry, automotive maintenance, web authoring, etc)
  • Skills for dealing with emergencies (first aid, CPR, how to work a fire extinguisher, lifeguard techniques, signalling and emergency shelters for wilderness emergencies, etc)
  and stick with at least one in each category until you're pretty good at it. Fix or build something that you still use years later.
• Spend a couple of years involved in a team sport or competition. Learn to turn your efforts to the team goal and to trust your teammate to do the same. Win some; lose some.
• Spend a couple of years involved in a individual sport or competition. Learn to rely on yourself. Win some; lose some.
• Experience the great outdoors in multiple environments and get comfortable in at least one. Have at least a small adventure.
• Complete (on your own or as the leader) projects with varied requirements
  • One that has many steps and requires planning well in advance; carry a clipboard, make lists
  • One that takes weeks of concentrated effort
  • One that takes longer but comes a little at a time
• Spend some long days in hard, physical labor. Learn to pace yourself, and learn that you can keep on keeping on.
• Spend some time taking care of others. Empathize to anticipate their needs.
• Connect with other people
  • Make friends
  • Learn to disagree respectfully
  • Learn to respect someone you don't like
  • Be there for someone else
  • Ask for help when you need it
• Connect with your inner life
  • Play
  • Do nothings much sometimes
  • Use your time wisely most of the time
  • Find awe in the world
  • Start learning who you are
  • Think about how you can be more like the person you want to be

It's a long list, but don't panic. You have a lot of time and individual parts of your life can count in several categories: playing in a soccer league is both a physical pursuit and a team competition and is a place to make friends; your long, hard project could produce the thing you still use years later. The hard work, the taking care of others, the winning, and the losing will all help you to learn who you are.

And finally:

• Work on something you suck at until you no longer suck. Learn that you can overcome your own limits, and what that requires of you. (If you do the rest you'll probably hit this along the way somewhere.)

The importance of writing to your audience

This is basically a rant, and one that I've alluded to before when discussing the programmer documentation for Qt.

Professor Butts and the Self-Operating Napkin (1931)

Rube Goldberg

Non-trivial software libraries are complex beasts. They have a lot of moving parts. Things have to be done in particular ways. Things often have to be done in particular orders. They may (often do) have abstractions that must be understood. Many require a particular point-of-view on the problem domain to use them well (or indeed at all).

And all this stuff needs to be documented, and that documentation has to be useful to anyone you want to use the library.

If the documentation is written by the author(s) of the library, they face a common problem; I like to call it "the expert's disease".¹ It's the inability to recall what really is basic, simple, and obvious and what only seems that way because you are so familiar with the domain. If you don't know the difference you can write comprehensive and technically accurate documentation (and burn a lot of time on the effort) only to find that isn't of any use to your users even though they are smart and capable programmers.

Well, you find out if you're lucky. Otherwise you ship it in that condition.²

In the last two years I've fought with several libraries whose documentation makes perfect sense once you already know the tools but is less than helpful when you first meet it. I've slogged through the learning process for Qt (using Q&A sites and blogs mostly³), boost::qvm (frantic trial and error, mostly), and a domain-specific tool whose roots go back to the Reagan administration (more trial and error).

This week I've been investigating logging frameworks. My project could really use one (and I can't use Qt's framework because parts of this code need to run in non-Qt contexts, too). There are a lot out there for c++ and I don't have a good apriori reason to chose anything in particular. I started looking at boost::log first because we are already using boost so it wouldn't represent another dependency. However, this beast has more moving parts than qvm and it's documentation is nearly as bad. I'm abandoning it for now while I look at other things because the documentation is no help at all for what I want to do with it.

So that's the lesson I wanted to get to: if your documentation doesn't help people new to your project they may just walk away. And you have no one to blame but yourself.

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¹ I developed the term while I was teaching physics. I came to full-time teaching after being a post-doctoral researcher for ten years (and given the length of my stint in grad school that means after being a full-time scientist for about fifteen years). A number of my ex-students still give me grief about the difficulty I had in getting the level right. Especially students from my first couple of years. On the other hand, they've stayed in touch which must mean I did something right around all the frustration and pain I caused them.

² On my current project at work we have finally managed to get the software into the hands of a tester (after about a year of my pushing the issue and for reasons entirely unrelated to my efforts). In addition to the bugs in the software he's identified (about a dozen, none of which were deep or difficult, thankfully) he's made it painfully clear how much our documentation suffered from the insider view. When a Ph.D. holder says your documentation is too dense and assumes too much you know you have a problem.

³ The Qt forums exist, of course, but they suffer from all the faults that Jeff and Joel talked about when they announced their big new idea in 2008. I can't recall and instance where I found a solution therein.