Reflexivity

Society of Automotive Engineers Collegiate Competition
Marshall MI

When the joke is on you….

It might be because of the Canadians (in this case, definitely not the Cubans – nor the Russians!) Or perhaps it’s about J.R?  This story is definitely about a Hobbit and some douchebags, including a few who didn’t come along for the ride. It involves bolts, assorted bodies, and those who actually go to bed at a time calculated backwards from when they want to rise.  (This may or may not be cultural.)

There was a poker game, lake slime, and roadkill. Variable sleep. Some drinks.

“You’re not working now!”
“I kinda am!”

The government was involved (paperwork trouble at the border), as was private business (as sponsors) and charity. No problematic moments (technically speaking) were observed, although there were multiple small- and large-group dynamics. No interpretations were censored. Soul-searching intercultural conversation was initiated.

On the return drive from Coldwater to Detroit’s airport, Dr. J.R. noticed more live deer than the eight carcasses we’d seen going. (Not to mention the four indeterminate raccoon-sized remains, and Lola’s addition of multiple blood-stained splotches sans corporeal evidence.)

“Our luck must be changing,” he said, but in fact the team had already managed multiple misfortunes without casualty.

“I wanna see an SMV crash.”

Our driver endured several mishaps including a crash that should have shaken her to the bone. However, Ruta did not hesitate for a second to put herself back out on the track.  In the end, the dreaded DNF (racing version) was avoided, despite periodic speculation about a DNR. The first day’s amazing achievement of being third to pass inspection faded into ancient history as the team teetered on the edge of doom throughout the second day, confronting everything that could possibly go wrong.

“Mass-prepared as usual.”

Competition Day was interrupted by a thunderstorm before any of the twenty-seven supermileage vehicles touched the track. For the UMass College of Engineering’s 2011 SMV Team, the storm was prelude to a serious crash followed in relentless succession by two flat tires,

another thunderstorm, and a second crash. The single successful Zoom-Mass SMV run (six laps around a specified high performance testing track) was accomplished at the very end of a wet and chilly day; the uncomfortable weather enhancing the potential for gloom to crush the team’s spirit.. Although the judges were willing to hold the track open just long enough to allow a second run because “we like UMass so much,” “good karma” intervened to drop the damaged left front wheel off the car at the starting line, just before Ruta began to hurtle again around the track.

“Oh man it stopped raining already?”

Charlie’s quip on the first day (pre-inspection) was echoed by Nick on the second: “At least it’s just drizzling.” The downpour, thunder, and lightning had been predicted for afternoon: every team was rushing to get their vehicles running in advance of the weather.  The forced pause allowed the Zoom-Mass SMV Team some extra fine-tuning of the brakes and more precise wheel alignment.

Then came the first attempt. After four successful test laps the previous day (during which the non-driving members of the team reunited a baby whooping crane with its parents), it was a shock to see Ruta and the car returning in the back of one of the rescue pickups.  Forty mile per hour post-thunderstorm gusts had ripped the windshield loose. Designed to withstand normal specified engineering tolerances, the extreme doubling of force gyred the windshield off its latches and under the left tire, sending the car into a 30 mph donut spin, and shearing off the bolt holding the left wheel to the axle as the car skidded to a screeching stop.

“Some crazy things happened” [J.R.]

Dr J.R summarized the team character: “Our response to adversity was great.”

The second attempt was delayed by the first flat tire. Seeking a correctly-sized inner tube added texture to the sense of tragicomedy. Ruta finally got the car around the track a lap and a half before another flat forced her to pull over for a second salvage ride in the rescue pickup (baby powder, it turns out, is essential equipment). One of the guys laughed, “They haven’t even seen us on the track, that’s how fast we are!” Dry humor peppered the team’s steady, focused response.

Those who were good

at the required tasks simply buckled down and worked out solutions. No one questioned or hesitated when asked to get this or do that. Ruta herself never blinked: she got back in a vehicle damaged from the crash, with a known design weakness – that had been repaired but not re-engineered due to the constraint of available time. There was a single brief flare of frustration from a team member naming an obvious oversight – which was respectfully acknowledged (later) by the responsible party. “Oh yea, about that…” Otherwise no one displayed their upset: team members took every obstacle in stride. “In the end,” Matt explained, “we all want the same thing.”

“In the zone” [J.R.]

“The time has come,” pronounced Andrew.

“I’m feeling good about this one,” said Charlie.

“This is when the praying starts, “ offered J.R as the Zoom-Mass SMV rolled out onto the track “held together with Bondo and duct tape” for the third attempt.  The Team did not hit their mileage target, but this “Apollo 13 of SMV” finished despite extensive damage to the aerodynamics of the body, including a persistently rubbing tire.

“Gangster metal fab” and a “ghetto look” set the tone as unassuming team members who had managed side projects throughout the year stepped up and delivered. Breaking out a football and Frisbee, downplaying endangered species rescue, noticing other cars’ idiosyncracies but always turning the lens back on themselves (why did our windshield look that way?!), this team built a supermileage vehicle from scratch and made it run.

Here’s to the Team!

“A free Corona for the first person to hit their call button,” announced a flight attendant on my Southwest flight home.

Popularity: 5% [?]

a Communication course on Media and Culture
UMass Amherst

The unreality of DayGlow’s Escape Reality tour provides reprieve to the 24/7 demands of the socially-wired digital world. Some of my students think I would enjoy the concert. It seems possible, although the behavior required to secure tickets does not appeal. Descriptions of the emotions raised by the keyboard-and-mouse competition carefully calibrated to the timing of a ticket release has all the characteristics of addiction. A fan, however, might just call it passion. To be sprayed with paint while mass dancing to great music at eardrum-blasting decibels: you’ve always dreamed of it, right? Most of the young adults taking this class could hardly imagine anything better. The encompassing sensory experience fundamentally connects them with their bodies and each other in a shared physical space and time: it is as far from online social interaction as you can get. I suppose DayGlowers may text or Tweet or update their Facebook statuses just to tweak their friends – haha, I’m here and you’re not! - but the point of DayGlow is to experience an entirely different way of being together.

It’s about Identity, Stupid!

In the final small group discussion with the teacher, one of the students in class made an identity claim about technology that encompassed everyone regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and (to a lesser but still relevant extent) socioeconomic class. “Technology,” Jamar said, “is what makes us normal.” Orienting to society via the specific types of technology known as social media defines the digital native and simultaneously signals a potent site of contest over the future. What kind of person do you want to be? What kind of person are you now? Although these questions were not asked overtly, they underscored the Red Pill/Blue Pill debate over the prominence of technology in student’s lives. While embracing what they like and accommodating to what they must, many members of this first generation of digital natives are also deeply concerned about what it all means.

Doing Collective Intelligence

In an example of what I call social metonymy, the students’ final team video projects expose individual ambiguity about their personal responsibility for choosing the reality that will define their lives. At the same time the two videos serve to represent this choice as an either/or dichotomy between the Blue Pill and the Red Pill.  In “DayGlow Makes Us Normal,” students blend a sharp knowledge of context with an unapologetic stance in support of ‘the blue pill’ – meaning an uncritical embrace of technology, particularly in terms of how it can be used to serve the needs of the self. These young people show us that they are doing their best to deal with everything; however surviving means sometimes choosing not to know in order to have the ‘escape’ that recharges them to be able to carry on. Dfoley explains:

…when Steph approached us and asked us to research deeper into DAYGLOW, ask questions and look into the three social relations, we as a class became defensive and responded first with a stern “NO!” and then eased out of the conversation with “What if we learn bad things?” We didn’t want to know how they targeted their audiences, what producers or distributors they went through, if they were in fact illegally using music or did they work with certain music industries and is the paint made in an un-ethical environment? At this moment, we didn’t want to know any of these answers; we didn’t want to know if the three social relations that applied to DAYGLOW were good or bad. Because the truth is, DAYGLOW was and is are [sic] escape, we leave all of our troubles at the door and it facilitates an environment that is blind to color or cultural difference but sees the common ground of the human race as a whole and understands that when we enter we all are in an agreement that we simply want to be. And enjoy the overpowering feeling of the love for life you feel as you live the music.

The other video is less ambiguous, showing more of the Red Pill approach through some critical juxtapositions that seem to ask  ”Do We Have to Be This Way?” If you enlarge the Facebook commentary photograph, you’ll see a student’s explanation about the DayGlow footage being replaced by activism by teenagers in Arizona regarding changes to the curriculum there. Taken as a package, the two videos provide a fairly transparent perspective on a particular demographic subset of the Millennial Generation. What isn’t necessarily evident in the videos is learning some students described about ethnic components of their identities:

Steph talked about the fact that many of us saw things in a “white way”. We never thought about seeing things this way but it was seemingly apparent that we did. Seeing in a “white way” is similar to the idea of heteronormativity. Heterosexuality is unconsciously perceived as the correct way to live and therefore heterosexual individuals are unfairly privileged in the same way that white individuals are solely because of their race. As Sgershlak said, many white college students do not think about the opportunities they are presented with because they have always been there. Many of them have not faced much adversity if any at all and this has influenced their perspective on the world. (Kim Delehanty)

Until I was 10 years old, I lived in Boston, where the lifestyle was much laid back. Many of my friends parents would often stay home, either unemployed, laid-off, or fired. There was never a real need to have a intellectual conversation with anyone, mainly because people around you did not complete much schooling. However upon moving to the suburbs, my identity changed in order to fit in with my surrounding environment. Conversations now stemmed to “what do you want to be when you grow up”, “what colleges do you plan on applying to”. Coming from a schooling system which did not produce many graduates, to one which produced more college graduates than Boston did high-school graduates, I would say my identity changed dramatically and maybe for the best. Being the most Americanized Hispanic, also meant when it came time to identify with relatives and family, my identity would also have to change, to incorporate an Hispanic culture which has not been present for several years. (Steve Baez)

Cultivating a Growth Mindset

I assigned the students in this 100-level course a nearly impossible task – to complete team video projects representing their understanding of how media and culture combine in their personally lived experience of college today. I wanted them to demonstrate to me that they understood the concept of articulation as it is used in communication theory.

With inadequate tools, little-to-no experience, and minimal guidance, they exceeded my expectations. We all wish the production values were higher but the meaning of these videos is the thoughtfulness with which these young people have illustrated the incredible tensions of being among the first human beings to live immersed in the digital age.

The intellectual prompt provided as an anchor for the course was obscure at first: “Digital Realities and Analog Living.” We also viewed the 1999 movie, The Matrix, for use as a guiding metaphor as well as an example of transmedia storytelling. The students composed individual videos for their midterm projects, absorbed my critique, and went to work to show me how it really is.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Dialogue: Identities
Whiteness (Race), Gender, Culture…

Do some suicides matter more than others?

It just so happened that our third dialogue session on identities came on the second anniversary of an 11-year-old’s suicide. Some high school students from Springfield offered a trenchant analysis of why the 2009 suicide of Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover received less sustained public attention than that of 15-year-old Phoebe Prince in 2010. In contrast with the perception that “people are always bullied” in Springfield – where Carl lived and died – “South Hadley always gets good press.”  The novelty of “something bad happening there” drew the media spotlight. Kamari, Noelani, Tiffany, Jerrico, Allie, Ashley and Tory had no difficulty naming stereotypes associated with area high schools, including those held by others about them.

Frustration and humor poured out of these young people in equal measure, spinning out in multiple directions and toward a range of targets. These high school juniors are in a bind and they know it. Refreshingly, they sense that high school students from other schools in western Massachusetts are also bound up in their own situations. The strangeness of social hierarchies based on assumptions about identity clearly exasperates them; telling jokes to keep each other laughing is a social coping strategy.

Naming the superficial

Most of the contact between high school youth occurs through sports. “You see what people in other towns think and it’s not very nice.” I was discouraged to learn only negative stories, mainly about South Hadley. I suspect South Hadley topped out the stereotype list both because they are hosting the multi-high school Dialogue Summit on April 30 and because of disparities of public interest in the two suicides.

Some stereotypes about students at South Hadley High School are

• “notorious” and “known for being effective at bullying;”
• “bad” in competition, swearing loudly despite the presence of young kids in the bleachers;
• “They gave me attitude – crazy attitude;” and
• “are always talking junk” and “yelling swears.”

The stereotype scenario became more complicated when we asked how these students at Renaissance High School think they are viewed by others. It depends upon where those other high school students are located. There’s one view from outside of Springfield that lumps all Springfield High Schools together: “ghetto thugs, everyone wearing do-rags, swearing, using guns, smoking dope and selling drugs – both at the same time.” This list was generated with the dull verbal tone of routine and placed in context: “This is what is shown in the media.”

Specifically, these Renaissance high schoolers imagine that their peers from South Hadley and Amherst probably assume they’re

• “loud” and “obnoxious;”
• “fight” and “steal;”
• will “kill them;” and
• “Dress like hoochies.” (“How do you spell that?” I asked. “H-o-o-c-h-i-e-s. You can throw an extra ‘o’ in there if you want.”)

These youth face a different set of stereotypes from their contemporaries in other Springfield high schools. This view came up when asked what they wanted others to know that contradicts the stereotypes. “I don’t think we can technically defend our school,” said Tory. Huh? I didn’t understand – “technically”?

“They always have a problem if you go to Renaissance:
‘you’re smart and stuck up.’”

Interestingly, these Renaissance youth don’t display extremely negative attitudes toward the other Springfield high schools. “All the bad schools have something good about them.” For instance, “Sci-Tech is good, it’s just loose.”  Loose meant “30 kids outside” without administrative/adult supervision: “that would never happen here.” Commerce has programs like 1B and 9th Grade Teams (among others), and a legacy. “My dad went to Commerce when it was good… they didn’t play.”

Going in with a Clean Slate

While the students were talking about these stereotypes, I was wondering how addressing these stereotypes directly might unfold during the upcoming Multi-High School Summit. Dialogue co-facilitator Taos asked the important question about how they want to approach the Summit. Kamari responded instantly, “I’m going in with a clean slate.”  They are excited! A little nervous but eager nonetheless.

From their point-of-view, neither South Hadley nor Amherst High School are very diverse. By “diversity” the students meant “not predominately one race” – then they had a bit of debate about whether Renaissance is diverse or not. From one view, “Springfield is 75% minorities,” which “isn’t very diverse.” When asked about the label, “minority,” Noelani smiled:  “We’re the majority here, but not everywhere else.” The slightly more-detailed demographic breakdown (provided by the students) is 36% Hispanic, 25% Black, 26% White, and .03% Asian.
Those block percentages suggest cultural homogeneity, but most of the Renaissance youth participating in these dialogues have parents who do not share the same ethnic profile with each other.

My hypothesis is that growing up in a family where everyone doesn’t look like the same ‘type’ or even behave – culturally – in the same ways has provided these youth with a neat ability of balancing differences. The evidence is threefold (at least):

1. there is no uniformity of identity among students in the dialogue group (most of whom hang together much of the time);
2. their ability to perceive beyond stereotypes, and also to ‘understand’ and be able to explain why people from outside Springfield seem unable to exercise such insight in return; and
3. their refusal to demonize their contemporaries living in Springfield, even though the vise of being misunderstood/misrepresented both from without and within must suck.

Identities are fluid

The communicative skillset demonstrated by these Renaissance juniors suggests an intuitive comprehension that “identity” is not a single, solid, unchanging thing.  We’ve just begun to explore if it is helpful to separate stereotypes associated with the body from stereotypes associated with the mind. Specifically, does learning how to recognize when one is ‘trapped’ by a stereotype based on body help one make the shift to perceiving another based on the consciousness of their brain?  Generalizations about awareness and intelligence can lead to troubled relationships, too, so I am not posing this as any kind of universal answer. I am suggesting that recognizing when a shift from body to brain would enhance a relationship, and then practicing enough to be able to pull it off when it matters, are crucial skills for navigating the increasingly complex mixing and blending of cultural ways-of-being in society today.

Please Note:

A fundraiser for an anti-bullying scholarship in memory of Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover will be held this upcoming April 16, 2011. Walker’s mother has become a national leader in the struggle to curb bullying in school, recently meeting with President Obama because of her activism, locally and nationally, to eliminate bullying in schools.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Amherst, MA

Boundaries or Identities?

Lately I’ve been wondering which comes first, or if this is a classic chicken-and-egg dynamic. Talking about whiteness raises interesting identity questions about belonging – to whom, when and where, how much. The privilege of being known on the basis of mind rather than body is one of the core features of whiteness: white people (like me) might notice attractive white people but would consider the physical as an extension of the mental. In contrast, white people (like me) might notice attractive brown people and stop there, as if the physical is the entire package.

You can see how this works by watching the strategic representation co-constructed by Director Hype Williams and Rihanna, as she is featured in the Kanye West video “All of the Lights” with Kid Cudi and a host of others: Charlie Wilson, John Legend, Tony Williams, Alicia Keys, La Roux, The Dream, Ryan Leslie, Alvin Fields and Ken Lewis. The reflection of whiteness back at itself is heavily dosed with gender, too.

The Rihanna thing is intense. The mournful tones of the introduction frame an ominous future for young girls growing up in a body-centric world. Not that the prospects for men are so much better – read the lyrics. We are all under surveillance of one kind or another most of the time, it’s just that the surveillance is so unobtrusive we can ignore it. Ignore it routinely enough and you’ll forget it’s happening!

My Hip Hop Education

I learn through interaction, talking about ideas and observing responses until I locate a stance that reflects the kind of ethos I want to project into the social world. Teaching allows me to test and assess some of the effects of acting consistently within that ethos, especially where it rubs against conformity. This semester, at least a third of the students in a Communication course on Media and Culture are proactively engaged in cultivating their own ethical stance in today’s fast-forward society. Together, we are all working to develop collective intelligence.

My hip hop education merged with my teaching in a surprising way. The cultural anthropologist and digital ethnographer Micheal Wesch – described as the “Head Honcho” by one of my students – commented on three videos submitted as midterm projects by students in my class to his call for “Visions of Students Today.” In one of his comments, it is obvious that he misunderstood something about hip hop, which I – roughly six hours ahead of Professor Wesch on the learning curve, haha! – was able to recognize.

Given a penchant for using my own mistakes to extend the learning process for myself and possibly others, I engaged:

Michael Wesch, thank you for joining our conversation! I am going to drag you into this lesson, too. An interesting coincidence of timing occurred with your comment to Jamar’s video “My Life, My Eyes, My World” and me learning about Hip Hop. I juxtapose our mistakes (!) to see if there is anything to be learned from them.

I shared all the gory detail with my students because it allowed me to provide them with an immediate and non-academic example of the communication phenomena of juxtaposition and articulation.

Juxtaposition and Articulation

In the All of the Lights video, Rihanna’s adult female body – the physical manifestation of her person – is juxtaposed with rousing lyrics and an exciting musical beat in a saccade. The combined visual and auditory stimuli articulates the dark female body as an object of desire. Because the body is foregrounded, considerations of mind fade from consciousness.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Vernal Equinox

Full Moon Stories

On the night before Equinox I met The Milkman, a non-brown person appearing strange in rural Central America, now sharing lessons with me from Zen Buddhism.  Senor Leche shared a specially strategic communicative move with me from his years of arduous spiritual training, emphasizing:

“They hit you with a stick until you get the nose insertion technique correct.”

I was impressed by how long he could hold the pose. “Practice,” he encouraged me. “Years of practice.”

The Rihanna thing?

The Rihanna thing is a quick reference to an earlier conversation about Beyonce and Alicia Keys.

When I first came upon Beyonce, [in that There-and-Then context], I was figuring myself out as a woman. She was girl/woman/sexy/curvy but still a side character. Then I came across Alicia Keys, who is seductive and very strong.

Her songs are about love and loss…

Alicia gives nothing of herself away.

Alicia is the actor in her videos and the guys are decoration.

Make your move.

Word, word… twice in a lifetime.

“Alright.
I have lyrics.” [study]

So says Talib Kweli
performing with
Jane Doe, Wordsworth, Punchline, and Mos Def of
Black Star.

“Hi-Tek is the guy who
provides the
music in the back.”
[acknowledgement]

Popularity: 1% [?]

Tribute.

All grown up and ready to lead, shake it up!

Make it real – compared to what?

Getting shot at, it’s all left up to us.

The hip hop generation, our generation

We’ve got the longevity, educated enough to know

No time for sorrow, gotta share all the love

Love the way it should be.

Not let our minds get trapped in time.

We can change how the world turns.

A remix of lyrics from songs performed by John Legend and The Roots, from the album “Wake Up!“

Credits:

Salamishah Tillet, Digital Booklet, Wake Up! Sept 2010.

Eugene McDaniels “Compared to What”

Leon Moore “Our Generation (The Hope of the World)”

Mike James Kirkland “Hang On In There”

Lincoln Thompson “Humanity (Love The Way It Should Be)”

Bill Withers & Ray Jackson “I Can’t Write  Left  Handed”

Billy Taylor & Dick Dallas “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free”

John Stephens “Shine”

Ahmer ?uestlove Thompson “Wake Up Everybody”

Popularity: 2% [?]

Sunny’s Birthday Party
Lois’ Place, Amherst MA

Nadezhda authorized me to use her name only if I spelled it correctly. MCO Peabody (”Try not. Do.”), Cautiously Concerned about Confidentiality, and Drunk on Power reminded me to use their pseudonyms. The other veterans of blog fodder tossed it off as old hat. Jeff (”I’m all the way in”), Sudhir and Beata have already topped out in terms of  informed consent. My plan for the evening was to multitask. Although the main goal was to celebrate friendships, I needed a survival strategy for viewing a Thai horror film: it seemed the perfect setting for writing up my pal Hunju’s defense on The New Asian Female Ghost Films.

That was before we began eating, and talking, and eating, and drinking and eating, and teasing (and eating and eating – we left lots of leftovers!) I found my way back to the scene of the Great Indonesian Noodle Feast by kinesthesia, feeling the roads by dint of remembered gustatory pleasure. Between the din of conversation and regular outbreaks of laughter that badly-subtitled film never had a chance!  Sudhir, Pete and I got nerdy: how do you tell someone about yourself – genetically or teleologically? It depends on how you orient yourself in timespace:

are you looking forward to a purpose (”teleological”) or looking back for origins (”genetics”)? Beata’s excitement about differential equations led (later in the evening) to Sudhir’s confession that he takes refuge in numbers, because who understands Homi Bhabha anyway?!

Radhika tried to muscle Sudhir out of dessert but he wasn’t about to let that happen! “No no no!” Liene was distraught by Laras’ pie-cutting technique but didn’t want her to stop: “Continue!” The group was inspired by “the asian pie-cutting thing,” also known as “the politics of pie-cutting.” “How are you supposed to cut a pie,” someone asked. And the inevitable: “How many doctoral students does it take to cut a pie?”

Not that the cake fared much better! You know that I was ecstatic at the synchrony of having set up a Tumblr blog for this semester’s teaching called – yep, you guessed it: cutting the cake. The title is inspired by Neal Stephenson’s Calca 1 which asks how to get eight equal servings from a square grid.

Also of note: Lois and I connected.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Theoretical and Computational Fluid Dynamics Laboratory
College of Engineering
University of Massachusetts Amherst
13 December 2010

Dr Kshitij Neroorkar’s defense was so smoothly delivered you’d have thought he’d done this a thousand times already. Who knows? Simulation of Flash-Boiling in GDI Injections with Gasoline-Ethanol Fuel Blends might be the kind of hard science topic where 1000 experiments are needed before you get to defend the phd! Being the lone, non-family-member representative of the social sciences present, “How much did you understand?” was the question-du-jour, post-defense. Here comes the test, huh? At least enough to recognize that Dr Neroorkar’s subject matter seemed very similar to Dr Shivasubramanian Golapakrishnan’s dissertation topic, which I distorted metaphorically in a previous blogentry: Language is a Fluid.  A big thanks, btw, to Dr Blair Perot, who read and questioned the two-way utility of my analogy:

“Since I understand the fluids, this analogy certainly helps me understand what is important to linguists. I am less sure about if it will help the other way around. Does it really help linguists understand/describe linguistics better to think in terms of fluids?” (I like how he cuts right to the chase!)

Foundation

The site of Dr Neroorkar’s study is in the nozzle part of a fuel-injection system, so its a pretty small physical space.  Inside that wee tunnel all kinds of things are going on, one of them being flash-boiling: the violent explosion of liquid into steam (a gas). The better this explosion is controlled, the more usable energy one gets, but it is tricky to maximize the energy potential because, well, all kinds of things are going on! There’s a pressure drop where the fluid enters, certain processes that generate the growth of nucleation bubbles which start out teeny-tiny and expand until  they touch each other, and then these bubbles bursting into spray in a process called atomization. The art is to manage the rate and speed (measured by a non-dimensional number – one of those deeply held math secrets engineers bandy about like social scientists bartering philosophical theories). The particular number in this case (that describes nothing in the physical world) is quite effected by the slightest change in temperature. Changes in temperature affect the rate and there’s a whole bunch of modeling that needs to be done to get this whole puppy optimized.  Or something like that.

“Then we do some mathematical tricks”

Turns out that with 8-hole injectors, the plumes of vapor generated from each hole merge in a way that needs to be taken into account, and this hasn’t actually been done before, or not so well/thoroughly or otherwise unequivocally established through parametric study. What is the difference, someone asked, from what Dr Gopalakrishnan did before? “Shiva didn’t couple them.”  Couple what? The nuances were definitely over my head here, but the two of them did use the same HRM model, which (as Dr Neroorker explained to me later) “assumes the liquid-vapor mixture is one substance, not separate.” Treating the fluid-gas mix as homogeneous rather than heterogeneous (as explained here right at my level) enables an epistemological framework in which the system will relax to equilibrium if given enough time. There are (apparently) problems with the assumptions of cavitation, and the degree of superheat figures in some crucial way, not to mention the influence of specific geometry (90% symmetric) and the composition of the periodic boundary conditions (sounds an awful lot like “context” to me).

Somehow, Dr Neroorkar put all that together in the first validated 3D simulation showing the geometry region, the residence time dominated region, and the vaporization time dominated region, and got a volatility distribution curve showing stuff that matters. With important limitations of course: laminar flows, empirical time scales relevant to one fluid not others, so on and so forth.

Party!

The best part (of course) was the celebration, where I got to pretend to blend in with the relaxing homogenous crowd of Indians (”convenience store not casino” as distinguished by Russell Peters) at Sneha & Kshitij’s cozy apartment. Except for Nidhi (who delivered all her laugh lines in Hindi so I couldn’t understand them), everyone stepped up to being blogged. Partha gave in pretty easy: “We aren’t cited that often.” I had a great conversation with Vikram, who informed me that “helium is helium,” and Upen, “Math is not context-dependent.” Bhooshan mildly admitted that there “are not so many more fundamental reactions to discover [in chemistry]“, which Upen amended, “until they are discovered!” I would have followed up on these topics except Ruchita chimed in, ” This is not the conversation I want to be having!” Oh alrighty then!

Sandeep, meanwhile, was focused: “Where is the biryani?” Pritish arrived a little late and took awhile to catch up, “She’s gonna use my name somewhere?” You know I was amused when Sneha told us “people used to think I was a boy.” And did I ever learn some gossip about somebody’s Victoria’s Secret!

The meal was awesome, the company grand, and the event momentous. Kshitij himself did the honors on the decadent chocolate mousse cake, announcing: “My job is done.”

Popularity: 4% [?]

Womensphere with Newsweek Global Summit
Manhattan (NYU Kimmel Center & Goldman Sachs)

“I am honored and inspired and intrigued.”

Nina summed up the third Global Summit from her role as a member of the event team. Sarah described how positive everyone was behind the scenes, which was elaborated upon by Nancy as “so much energy and spirit put into action….[this event] was about doing, not just cheering.” Vanessa emphasized everyone’s generosity and authenticity, summed up by Robin as “passion with a splash of compassion.” Was it Aidan who was so eager for the final round of acknowledgments to end? She also made sure that Claude received special recognition for superb orchestration of the nuts-and-bolts of a flawless large group event for several hundred women who just want to be allowed to row.

“Loving good, boys!”

The Maud Scientist shared her version of “Good boys, good!” with us while introducing the Innovation Roundtable after the first morning’s series of keynotes. Shelly Lazarus had told us about a presentation she had attended about the rowing team at Cambridge, which was studied for five months by cultural researcher Mark de Rond en route to beating historic rival Oxford for the first time in seven years. A mere ten days before the ultimate competition, the team made the unprecedented replacement of the male coxswain with a woman.

In 2008 Cambridge was coxed by Rebecca Dowbiggin (a Ph. D. candidate in Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic) who tips the scales at a slight 102 pounds and stands 5’4” tall. Her teammates were all a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier.Rebecca is not capable of making a meaningful contribution to the speed of the boat through the water by pulling on an oar. But then, that’s not what she’s in the boat to do. She has a different purpose. The rowers sit in the boat, oars in their hands, with their backs to the finish line. The cox sits in the stern and faces forward, the only member of the team who can see where the boat is going, who can adjust for wind or current or course. The cox shouts encouragement, and coordinates tempo and teamwork. She can’t win without strong oarsmen, but they can’t win without her either. Without mutual trust and respect the team will surely lose, if not drown.

Shelly told us that Professor de Rond attributed the team’s risky group decision to three factors:

• the breadth of nuanced calibration of the team,
• the depth of trust established on the basis of intimacy generated by cultivating the capacity for such finely-tuned calibration, and
• the distinct difference in leadership style of each cox.

In a phone conversation earlier today, Professor de Rond clarified these lessons, explaining that the palpable difference between the two cox – as felt and experienced by the rowers – was that the male cox made the rowers nervous by exhorting them too much, generating a sense that something was off. Rebecca demonstrated more trust, synchronizing with their experience, and keeping focused on technical calls which allowed them to feel as if everything was proceeding according to plan. She had used the special call, “Good boys, good!” once during practice and – noticing the extremely positive response, did not use it again. Instead, she held that call in reserve, until at one very strategic and challenging moment in the race, she let it out. And the boys responded. No gender claims are being made based on this tiny sample (although basic heterosexual biology probably played some role). Professor de Rond did say, however, that “She used her femininity in a very clever way.” The strategic use of praise, tucked within a superb performance of technical calls that kept the team settled and steady, provides a strong undergirding for the main point made for us gathered at Womensphere. In the words of Shelly Lazarus,

“she just let them row.”[i]

“Leaders come in all sizes.”

Analisa Balares made the comment teasingly as she stepped onto the speakers’ box that had been removed to accommodate Shelly’s height. Womensphere is Analisa’s brainchild. It is not surprising that she pulled together a team, including an impressive alliance with Newsweek, and designed this Global Summit exemplifying Shelly’s recommendations for effective and powerful leadership: hire strong people, mean the questions that you ask, be generous – know that you cannot say thank you often enough, invite people who work for you into the decision-making process, share the glory, make problems bite-sized, celebrate successes and problems together, be passionate, and act in faith that the better people are then the less they want to be managed.

As I intuit my way through the upcoming series of blog entries attempting to distill the vast reserve of wisdom pooled during this incredible gathering, I keep thinking about the influence of the researcher on the Cambridge rowing team. Shelly told us that team members, in the beginning, kept trading technical competence for social competence. In other words, like all groups, the early stages of development are composed mainly by politeness and gravitation toward similarities. Usually, no one wants to be the first to rock the boat. Many groups never acknowledge, let alone resolve the roots of various tensions, choosing instead to try and leapfrog over them, as if by ignoring differences they will either go away or – at least! – not interfere with the ultimate performance or outcome of the group’s goal. Is it possible that the fact of being studied encouraged the team to become more forthcoming and bond so well that they could disregard conventional wisdom about the timing of crew changes and (possibly) even violate gender norms of male/athletic comraderie?

Passion: Collective Consciousness and Coordinated Action

It is impossible to overstate the achievements of this Summit. Analisa spoke of “socializing ideas” and the laws of physics, especially the laws of attraction and inertia. What we experienced is the constitutive power of language: together – the members of the event team, presenters and moderators, and all of us participants – we spoke a culture into being. Kavita Ramdas put it like this: “I just made a community of sisters.” Those 48-hours composed an instance of planning coming alive, as expressed by one of the event team members (whose name I unfortunately didn’t catch).

The Russian literary scholar Mikhail Bakhtin recognized the centripetal and centrifugal forces of language in use. Centripetally, Analisa gathered us together, attracting and holding us in orbit around a central core in order to share vision and perpetuate faith in our potential to collectively come together and generate solutions to crucial problems in order to preserve the planet for ourselves, our children, and theirs. Now, centrifugally, we scatter to the ends of the globe yet remain connected by the extent to which we claim the identities and relationships forged through the cultural communion of living by a common code. One of the beauties of this code is its inherently inclusive nature. Mustafa exhibited this in droll fashion: “I’m not your typical womensphere woman.” Then he exhorted:

“Keep in touch. Stay with the program.”

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[i] FYI, I made an interesting discovery while searching for a cool link or two to embellish Shelly’s story. I spent about twelve hours worrying that Shelly had been hoodwinked!  Or perhaps heard what she wanted to hear? (Only because I’ve been known to be guilty of this, myself: its that desire thing. Ahem.)  I found myself in the uncomfortable position of finding several references to this research – none of which mentioned the female coxswain. Yes, the team chose social intelligence over technical competence, but in generic reports the emphasis was on the replacement of one of the rowers, two weeks in advance of the race. In a brief article in the Cambridge’s journal, Research Horizons (2007, p. 30), a “socially gifted oarsman” was chosen over another who was technically closer to the ideal individual performance because of the team’s “unremitting search for rhythm.” This video of the researcher, Marc de Rond, explains how social intelligence – being able to both cooperate with & compete against each other – is crucial to team performance. No mention of Rebecca.

What to do? Embarrass Shelly? Upset everyone? Rewrite the blog so as not to include any mention of this theme or its impact upon us?  Imagine my relief when I read Professor de Rond’s response to my inquiry this morning, explaining the details and clarifying that Rebecca’s role on the team “came out in my teaching more than the actual book.” I am even more intrigued, now!  It seems to me the struggle of leadership is one of calibrating rhythm, tempo, and unexpected perturbations. We need more men like those Cambridge rowers, able to choose the group’s goals ahead of the individual. And we need more publicity and public discourse about mixed-gender accomplishments!

The whole story is presented in de Rond’s account, The Last Amateurs: To Hell and Back with the Cambridge Boat Race Crew. Professor de Rond and I spoke a bit about why Rebecca’s part of the story was less emphasized, and I think there are important points to be learned from this, too.  The two men who were replaced were quite disappointed – as anyone would be who has trained long and hard for one specific purpose. The replacement of the oarsmen was more controversial – and informative, in de Rond’s view – of the importance of social competence even for teams with one hard linear goal: to win The Boat Race. In other words, the omission in the media isn’t only about sexism. There’s care for those who didn’t make the cut, too.

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Spotted Eagle’s Land
New Mexico

Thank you for calling things what they are: “violence,” “mendacity,” “personal issues.” Such blights on beauty must be removed if one would live in a good way.

I am saddened that you had to witness and forgive my carelessness and ignorance. I am horrified that I needed you to witness residues of sheer ugliness. I strive to close the kindness-to-self gap. I am this way: originally un-parented and yearning to feel joined. I will myself to be better.

Everything is a Lesson

I arrived into a whirlwind of preparation, barely getting to chuck my gear into the sacred pop-up before being put to work. Pulling on the only pair of work gloves visible, I remember thinking I would need to be careful to avoid a blister, as the hole at the base of the left thumb was significant. Must be why no one else is wearing them, I thought to myself. A few hours later, I was reluctant to stop and go down to the river. The five women cooling off and chatting by the San Juan were all new to me; I didn’t know what to talk about yet didn’t want to be held back by insecurity, either. It took awhile for my mind to recognize this as probably the only opportunity to rinse off before the official commencement of Ceremony. Could I have anticipated that acting on such thoughts would become profound learning opportunities?

Which comes first: listening or observation?

In terms of my developmental biography, I have needed repetition and convergence. If explanatory language accompanies direct observation, then I might absorb the lesson at once, otherwise the behavioral evidence shows that I have a systemic weakness at absorbing important information upon first telling. Sometimes, depending on my internal relation to the content of the message, I might miss the point several times. My stunning ability to not notice visual information cropped up at several junctures – weakening the group, sometimes crucially. Ouch. On the second day, five of us got into the yarn: Carolina anchored the 90- and 180-degree weaving sweeps of, respectively, me & Athena and Joanne & Mary. My casual handling of the yarn invited critique.

“Matter is sacred.”

“We’re like that, aren’t we.” Margarita gazed steadily into my eyes once I realized that my zeal to line the gardens around the house with stones from the river had caused me to forget that she was not supposed to labor. It seems I couldn’t balance a focus on things equally with a focus on people. Remembering instructions – all of them always and the specifically relevant ones in particular – remains a high-priority goal for me. Passing on instructions given to one or a few of us to all of the rest of the members of our group seemed even more difficult. We were confronted not only with extending trust equally between Spotted Eagle and Viviana, but also with acting among ourselves on the basis of a similarly presumed and reciprocal trust.

There were thirteen of us and Marlene, plus Gater. The Elders had specific roles: two Teachers, one Firekeeper, and a Singer. Sheila was our Chef. MP performed her customary on-demand interventions in addition to behind-the-scenes support and logistical planning.

Two of the participants – Betty and Mary – were tasked exclusively with tending the fire; the rest of us were supposed to be interchangeable. Athena was drafted to assist with the fire, and Nat got to enhance the chicken coop. Otherwise any and each of us did whatever needed doing. All participants had been instructed to prepare in advance by fasting and considering questions of what we hoped to bring to, and gain from, Ceremony. I had come asking to be honed. Thank you (uncomfortable though it was) for not missing a single chance to plane through my rough spots so that what I seek to give can be more accurately focused. Now I know what it means to receive tough love!

“We have gusts.”

Several storms punctuated Ceremony. One instruction that was difficult for me to absorb came from Nancy. “Don’t look out the windows. Don’t invite the lightening to fall in love with you.” There were several instances when an instruction given to one or a few of us was not passed on, culminating in confusion and sometimes resulting in a public admonishment. At least twice, I found myself discounting a message from a peer, and once I failed to pass on an instruction that had been faithfully passed to me. We improved steadily, but chaos managed to overtake us (briefly) near the end, when nature joined the contest between those of us eager for Ceremony to end and those of us wishing it could continue. Given the alternatives that we had been discussing, I was absolutely relieved when Viviana discovered it was ‘just me’ who had misplaced the special folder.

“We measure time in moments.”

It has taken decades to come to terms with the valence I have of manifesting underlying tensions in a group through things I say or do. My awareness of being immersed in group-level dynamics began to develop by accident and happenstance. Twenty years ago, Spotted Eagle presented me with an embodied lesson of “what fear can do.” The first experiment catapulted me out of a job and onto the road, launching me into investigations where I have probed a range of boundaries. No sphere of social interaction has been off-limits, from interpersonal relationships with family, lovers, and friends to the structural hierarchies between democratic freedom (individual independence of thought and action) and institutionalized authority – my own (such as with students and colleagues) and with/against ‘the system’.

Spotted Eagle’s original lesson to me was about the risk of being incapacitated by the irrational emergence of feeling frightened. Since then, I have used the visceral sensation of unfounded fear (throbbing pulse, weak legs, rising anxiety in the presence of no identifiable threat) as a guide for activism.  Somehow, I decided that this kind of intrapersonal emotional reaction suggests the presence of an alternative timestream to the typical flows engendered by the technologically- and socially-constructed momentum of the last half-millennium.

Over the years, I have learned about my proper place in society and the world from the reactions of others. Just as with the physical and hormonal changes wrought by the monthly reproductive cycle, the ‘good’ (desirable, preferred) and  ‘bad’ (undesired, dispreffered) responses – especially from people I care about – provides crucial information for the process of unifying consciousness (perceptual awareness) with occupying this/my body. For me, such self-knowledge has become foundational to ethical action in our increasingly diverse, interactive, and rapidly-changing societies.

Many of my attempts to work deliberately with the energy of these valences have been failures, some of them excruciatingly so. Nonetheless I learn from each mistake and take hope with each tiny hint of success. My awareness of consequences remains fledgling, although I work diligently to accept responsibility for conscious choices as well as my less- and un-conscious behaviors, most especially those that lead to unintended effects and unwanted outcomes.

“Laugh and free the dolphins!”

The honor of being invited to participate in a Menopause Ceremony in an Indigenous way, following rituals taught to a properly-chosen person who was raised and trained traditionally, is a gift that exceeds my capacity to comprehend. The mix of meaningful discipline and unconditional love in the Ceremonial Way gives special rigor to the task of shaping a life worth living. Additional gifts – being knighted, for instance (to Pay Attention! ) – nearly overwhelmed my limited emotional resources. Thank you for showing me some of the junctures I missed, where my selfishness or ego took us through chronotopes less beautiful than other options. The record shows that, at times, I operated in sync with a Puberty Ceremony rather than in celebration of acquired wisdom.

How perfect that you were kind enough to let me know, before sending me back into the world, that I needed to wipe the boogers from my nose!

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