The Naming of Jesse

Picking a name for a child is a difficult task. A person's name is frequently one of the first things that people learn when they meet someone new. It is difficult to change your name. And you have to pick the name before you know anything about your new child.

Mira and I have our own constraints on what names we want. Mira, who had her name mispronounced and misspelled throughout her entire life, wants names that are easy to spell and pronounce. I want names that sound nice (which seems to mean no hard stops, based on the names I like and don't like). We are also following Mira's family's tradition of naming in memory of dead relatives that were important to us (and by naming in memory of them, I mean the first letter has to be the same). Since we are raising our children as Jews, I want them to have Irish middle names in recognition of that part of their heritage (this somewhat conflicts with Mira's requirement that the names be easy to spell and pronounce). And Mira has a rule that we can't use names of any of our exes (which mostly just eliminates one of my favorite names, which is of course Irish, easy to spell, and easy to pronounce).

Operating under those constraints, we chose the name Jesse Liam for our son. Then we chose the Hebrew name Yaakov Lev. Jesse is a biblical name (the father of king David) which means gift. Liam is derived from Wilhelm and roughly means helmet. Yaakov, also a biblical name, has a complex meaning because of the story in which it appears. It means protection according to some sources and basically usurper according to others ("one who grasps"). Lev is the hebrew word for heart. So translating his name into concepts produces "gift of protection, helmet of the heart."

Jesse is for our maternal grandfathers, Jesse and John, Mira's great-uncle Jake, and Mira's great-great-aunt Jeannette. Liam is for my grandmother Love and my great-uncle Liam.

Diaper Changes

I tend to collect a lot of data because I like to analyze data. I have roughly kept track of how much diaper laundry I have done for Jesse, which roughly corresponds to how many diaper changes he has had. Our diaper pail fits approximately 20 diapers, so that is about how many are in each load. On average over the past 9 months, we have had to do 2 loads of diapers per week. The following graph shows about how many diapers Jesse has used per day (with some smoothing), starting in late January:

The data is a little off in some places because of trips and extra diaper laundry when we got new diapers, but I think I mostly corrected for those errors. The large spike near day 100 (which corresponds to early May) was when we started potty training him using elimination communication. The way that worked for us was to basically change his diaper every half hour and put him on a toilet every time. To some degree, this means that the data is scaled differently before and after day 100, because prior to that most diaper changes were with saturated wet diapers, and after that, most diaper changes were with diapers that were barely wet. When we first started EC, his diaper was wet every half hour, which is why there is a huge spike in diaper laundry. Then he started learning to wait for the toilet when that was possible, and the diaper laundry decreased. Additionally, I started using washcloths instead of real diapers because we didn't need much absorbency, and more of them fit in the diaper pail. The downward movement was somewhat exaggerated by some trips in June and July, so I don't think the increase near 150 is real. The increase just past 200 represents moving him back to real diapers all the time as he got better at waiting and started crawling in ways that made the washcloths not work. The decrease past 250 represents progress on toilet training.

Actions have consequences

Throughout our lives, we make decisions which change the rest of our lives. Sometimes it is fairly obvious that a decision will end up being significant, but other times we have no idea how much things will change as a result of what we do. Mira went to the same summer camp for years and eventually ended up as the bus counselor on the bus she rode. The bus route was overcrowded and probably should have been split in half to be safer. She told the camp that she wouldn't come back unless they split the bus, and they didn't. So that summer she ended up working at Old North as a docent instead. Which led to her learning to ring church bells. Which is how we met. Some person I don't know and will probably never meet can claim some credit for me meeting my wife. Life is random like that.

I borrowed a friend's car today to drive to an interview.

When I look back over my life, I can see all kinds of decision paths like that. Some seemingly minor decision sets up a chain of events that eventually changes everything. And I'm sure that there are many more that I am unaware of. A stupid little essay that I wrote in my 7th grade math class because the school board decided that even math classes should have essays was the first step in the process that led to me finishing high school a year early. Which probably changed where I lived at MIT as an undergrad (and possibly even what college I went to). Almost all of my current friends in the Boston area are people that I met either directly or indirectly because I lived at Random. I probably would have met some of them anyway, but who knows? Almost my entire social circle is people that I might have never met if I hadn't written that essay.

While driving north on I-95, I noticed some odd movement in the cars ahead and to the left of me. Then I saw a car that was sideways at the left edge of the road (perpendicular to traffic with wheels down, not on its side).

Some major decisions obviously change our lives. Where we live, where we work, where we go to school all change who we meet and who we spend time with. People tend to agonize over these decisions, as though they are more important. But then someone decides that math classes don't need essays, or that adding a bus is a good idea. And all that careful planning is overwhelmed by the randomness of life.

This seemed like a good time to slow down. Then the sideways car was in front of me. This seemed like a good time to stop. Unfortunately, momentum can't disappear in an instant.

I have been very actively applying for jobs for the past 5 weeks. I'm mostly concentrating on two totally different areas that I think would work well. I know how to connect either of them to my long term plans. I'm not sure which one I like better. One of them probably requires us to leave Boston. There are also some other possibilities that I'm considering which don't clearly connect to my long term plans, but which I can probably manage to make work through creative execution of the secondary backup plan. I'm not actually expecting to have multiple simultaneous job offers, so I will probably take the first one I get, but I might also end up actually getting to make a decision. It's interesting to see how very different the the hiring time scale is for different industries.

The result was a low speed collision between the front right corner of the car I was driving and the driver's side door of the other car. There was a brief period where I thought I would stop in time before I heard and felt the impact.

And then today there's this accident that occurs in front of me and spreads out in a way I don't manage to avoid. When I finished telling the police officer what happened and said "I tried to stop, but I couldn't manage to" he replied with "Yeah, well you're not superman. You clearly weren't at fault." So I guess there's that at least.

But when I thought about it more, I realized that if I had hesitated for 1/4 second, it wouldn't have been a low speed collision. It's likely that the other driver would have been injured. If I had hesitated for a full second, he possibly would have been killed. If I hadn't slowed down at all, then I probably would have been next to the accident by the time his car came across the highway, and it would have been my driver's side door getting hit, and I would have possibly been injured. There was some 2-3 seconds of my life where my actions changed the outcome from me being probably injured to someone else possibly being killed to that person being probably injured to just cars being damaged. Which can be fixed.

Every moment of every day, we are making decisions. Most of the time, we won't know for years which of these decisions will end up mattering. And we never find out about the decisions that would have been important if they had been made differently. But sometimes, we know that a decision mattered right away.

I have this habit of considering what my life would be like if I had done some particular thing differently. It's one of the things I do while I lay awake at night sleeping (I'll explain how that makes sense some other time). But there's a limit to how far I can push things with any kind of certainty. It's easy to work out things that would have prevented something from happening. It's much harder to understand what would have happened if something had been enabled.

The title of this entry is the opening line to the first episode of the TV show "Dollhouse." That show was on track to be my all-time favorite show for the first 1.5 seasons. Then it switched from being a show about some interesting psychology topics into a show about defeating the evil corporate conspiracy. Which is fine, but not nearly as appealing.

Why I studied astrodynamics

There are two stories from my childhood that provide good foreshadowing of my interest in astrodynamics. Mira told them at my graduation party, but for those who were not there:

First Story:

When I was two, we were visiting my grandmother in Florida. My mom wanted a break from her older kids (my little sister was about 6 months old), so my dad took us to watch a shuttle launch (this ended up being the only shuttle launch I saw in person). I was very excited with everyone else before the launch, and counted down with everyone. But then, as I watched the shuttle go up higher and higher in the air, it became clear that I was concerned about something and wanted to hide under the seats. My dad asked what was bothering me, and I explained that when I threw a ball in the air, it would come back down and hit me in the head. That thing over there was going up really high and looked really big, and I didn't want to get hit when it came back down.

Second Story:

When I was 5, Halley's comet was in the proper part of its orbit to be seen from Earth. I heard about this comet for several weeks as it came closer and closer. I remember being excited about this thing that was flying around the sun that only came close enough to be seen every 75 years. Then Challenger exploded. Somehow I managed to work out that the shuttle had been hit by the comet based on what the news was saying. I was very upset that the scientists at NASA had not figured out where the comet was going to be and let the shuttle fly into it. I lost interest in looking at the comet, because I was upset that it had blown up the shuttle.

And now I have completed my degree work in astrodynamics. I can make sure that spaceships will not fall on children's heads and will not fly into comets.

Just for clarification, astrodynamics is the science of determining orbits and spaceship trajectories. People who study how stars work are studying astrophysics, which is basically unrelated. As best as I can tell from what my parents have said and NASA's launch records, the shuttle launch was the first launch of Challenger, so these stories are about the first and last launches of Challenger. And I first heard about the broken O-ring that actually destroyed Challenger six years after the explosion, and was very surprised at the time to discover that the space shuttle had not been hit by a comet.

Enough Mens, time for some Manus

After spending 8 years doing theoretical astrodynamics (and the last four of those were applying theoretical math that nobody in the Eastern half of the US understands), I needed to spend some time doing something more practical and hands-on. I needed to construct things that could be touched and looked at. There was a brief period where Mira and I considered buying a broken house so that I could rebuild it, but that didn't end up working out. So instead, I had to make do with smaller projects.

Project 1: A hat for Jesse
Mira knits all the time, but I only knit occasionally. In early November, I decided that I wanted to knit a hat for Jesse. Mira had some yarn leftover from a sweater she had made for him, so I started a hat that would match the sweater. Then Mira went into labor. I spent a fair bit of time in the hospital working on the hat, and managed to finish it before we went home, so Jesse was able to wear a matching hat and sweater made by his parents when he left the hospital.

Working on Jesse's hat while holding Jesse in the hospital

The matching hat and sweater on Jesse at about 10 days old

New skills learned: knitting in the round, binding off for a hat

Project 2: Socks for Mira
I told Mira that for her birthday and Chanukah, I would knit her whatever she asked for. She asked for socks, picked out some yarn, and picked out a pattern. I have finished the first sock and I am about halfway down the ankle on the second sock. It turns out that socks have a lot of stitches and therefore take a long time to finish. And this yarn is fairly dark, so I can only work on these when the lighting is good. I don't have any pictures of these yet.

New skills learned: turning a heel with a heel flap, binding off a sock toe

Project 3: A hat for friends' child
Some friends were moving away this fall, and as a going away present, I made a hat for their daughter. This hat was double knit, which is a process of knitting that creates two layers of fabric simultaneously. For some reason people seem to think this is difficult (even Mira has never tried it), but really it just involves having more yarn tangled around your hands. I also designed the pattern. Did you know that every web site that lists hat sizes for toddlers has different numbers for how big their heads are? I kind of guessed what a good size would be based on the range of numbers I could find, put ribbing on the bottom in case it was too big and then made the hat taller in case it was too small (a double knit object is very stretchy, but stretching it in one direction makes it smaller in the other direction). She seems to like her hat, which is nice because two year olds are totally unpredictable and she could have just as easily decided she was unwilling to ever wear it.

One of the nice things about double knitting is that the hat is reversible. It really is like making two hats, but they are attached to each other.

New skills learned: double knitting, knitting pattern design

Project 4: Dresses for Mira

Nursing with the dress on.

Mira and I went to a Bar Mitzvah two weeks ago. Mira was having trouble deciding what she could wear that would be fancy enough while still allowing her to nurse Jesse. So we decided that we would make dresses that would be modified to allow nursing while wearing the dress. Mira helped with the first dress (the black and white one), but then realized that since she is a responsible adult and actually has a job (unlike me), she did not have time to work on sewing. So I finished the first dress and made the second one on my own. The dresses both came out very well and we expect Mira to wear them many more times. We will probably be making more clothing in the future. Sewing in zippers is not nearly as complicated as it seems to be when you read a written description of how to do it. Videos are much better. Also, French seams are awesome.

New skills learned: French seams, zipper installation, sewing in elastic bands, using fusible interfacing, modifying clothes for nursing, adjusting a dress pattern to fit a particular person

Project 5: New shirts for Mira
My sister made nursing turtlenecks for Mira. Winter is coming to an end. Mira needs summer nursing shirts. I will probably make them in May.

Project 6: New Bookcases
This one is still in the planning phase. We have about 800 books. Most of them are in four bookcases in our living room. Mira does not like these bookcases. I like carpentry. I have half-drafted plans for what I want in my head, and hope that I will actually build these bookcases some time this year. I am intending to put doors on the bookcases, so that the small toddler we will have next year can't pull all the books off the shelves. I am also thinking of mounting our television on a bookcase door and putting the TV related electronics (VCR and such) behind the television, with the cords nicely contained. And maybe I'll throw in a coat closet while I'm at it. This is still an imaginary bookcase, so it has all kinds of great features. We'll see what actually happens.

Friday, February 25th

It is the changes and transitions in life that are always the most interesting parts. My life has always been full of changes. The longest I have ever lived in the same building is about 8 years. I went to five different schools before college. My hobbies also seem to be all about changes. Change ringing is the music of combinatorics, square dancing is the rhythmic moving from one formation to another, and ba gua is a martial art focused on stability in transitions. Even my research is about how to get from the initial point to the final point, and what the best transition is. Then there are the deeper changes within myself that happen all the time. Two of the most significant transitions in my life were centered around Friday, February 25th. I remember both of those days and the events which occurred on them very clearly.

The first day (17 years ago) I remember laughter, smiles, balloons, and rain as I waited to be picked up with my cello. It was a day of beginnings, a day of happiness. The spring that began then was one of the happiest seasons of my life, in which basically everything just went the way I wanted it to (this also happened in the fall of 1999, fall of 2003, and summer of 2007). That weekend and the following week were just about perfect.

The second day (11 years ago) I remember snow, a turning away, a question, an answer that wasn't an answer, "heads will roll", a ball, and a pair of parallel conversations. It was a day of endings, a day of sadness. The spring that followed was the worst season of my life, in which almost nothing went well. There was a certain happiness and optimism that I had had which faded out and never fully returned. I lost touch with quite a few people that spring, though I have recently found some of them again.

The major transitions associated with those days did not actually occur on them, as they were far too big to be completed in just a day. Those days were just the turning points at which things could never be the same again. They were the catalysts which forced the transitions to occur, forcing the changes which I could at best attempt to control. Those two days and the transitions associated with them are linked in more ways than I could count, because as different as they seem to be, they are in many ways just the opposite sides of the same thing. Separating everything out into basic components and then putting them all back together again. The story of the canon and the rainbow, of the sun and the flame. A story of discovery and exploration.

And now it is Friday, February 25th again, for the fifth time in my life (although the first time I was only 2 1/2 years old and probably didn't notice). The next time this will happen is in 2022. I'm not expecting any major events today, although my life is full of transitions right now. I remember thinking in the spring of 1994 that the only way I could ever have a better year would be if I graduated, got married, had a child, and got a job I really liked all in one year. Two of those have happened in the past year, one of them was longer ago than that, and the fourth one I am still working on. Where will things go from here? I don't know.

Thank You

I just turned in my PhD thesis. Many people helped me get to this point. Here is the acknowledgements section:

I would like to thank everyone who made this research possible: my committee members - Olivier de Weck, Manuel Martinez-Sanchez, and Ray Sedwick - for providing advice as I navigated the depths of differential geometry; NASA and the MIT School of Engineering (through a TA position for 1.00) for providing funding as I worked through the mess of equations to create a small amount of order in the chaos of Newtonian gravity; my official readers Thomas Lang and Paulo Lozano for feedback as I completed my research; and my unofficial proofreaders Dale Winter, Rachel and Alan Fetters, Sarah Rockwell, and Allen Bryan for helping me to realize where my explanations needed more clarification.

I would like to thank my many friends for making life more enjoyable while I toiled on a seemingly endless task of translating PhD level theoretical math into moderately usable engineering concepts. I would especially like to thank the Boston change ringers for providing a steady rhythm in my life, Tech Squares for reminding me to peel off from my research and shoot the stars every now and then, Metaphysical Plant for reminding me that all hunts for knowledge are eventually completed, and MIT Hillel and TBS for the services and prayers that provided regular cycles in my life to mark the passage of time. I would like to thank my high school cross-country team for training me to have the endurance to keep going forever, my high school math club for encouraging me to study math beyond what I was taught, and the Cows for being good friends.

I would like to thank my parents for everything they have done: providing a good home for me to grow up in, encouraging me to explore the abstract world of ideas, letting me rush off to MIT where I got stuck for years in an endless maze of equations that I may have finally found a path through (suboptimal as it may have been), and most of all for teaching me the value of hard work, honesty, and persistence. I would like to thank my many siblings for living their lives so fully while I was too busy to do so on my own, providing me with many niblings to enjoy, and making the holidays so full of love and excitement. I would like to thank my in-laws for providing some local family and support as Mira and I toiled through the challenges of graduate school. I would like to thank my extended family for being a good and supportive family, and Mira's extended family for welcoming me so quickly and filling our lives with love and happiness. I would also like to thank my son Jesse for making the final months of this work much more exciting than they would have been without him.

And most of all I would like to thank my wife Mira, without whom I would never have made it all the way to the end. She has provided support and encouragement at every step of this process. I have learned how to move the heavens and the earth for her and I would like to remind her that some things really are rocket science. Melanyecce iluvòrënenya oio, mo bhean chéile luinnar silamiradilenya.