spynotes ::
  May 11, 2006
Typography

Scene: Outside the Girl Next Door�s House.

AJ: (Clicking The Girl Next Door�s garage door opener to close the door, following our cat-feeding mission). Mommy, do garage door openers work by radio waves?

Harriet: Uh, I�m not sure AJ. I�ll have to look that up.

AJ: I think it works by light.

Harriet: Why do you think that?

AJ: Because it�s superfast. And light is faster than sound.

Harriet: Good thinking.

* * * * *

AJ has sent me running to the dictionary, encyclopedia or internet more than once this week. More than making me consider my ignorance, I have been stunned by my own lack of curiosity. How could I not know how a garage door opener works? How could I not ever have given it a moment�s thought?

It turns out that AJ was right about the radio waves. He probably read it somewhere, but doesn�t quite remember where � a family failing, I think, as I�m proving by my current struggle to track down some of the more illegible footnotes scribbled on drafts of my diss chapters.

He was right about light, too � all electromagnetic waves travel at the speed of light (at least according to my elementary-school level science reference materials). I�m pretty sure he came up with that part on his own. He made an observation and carried it to his logical conclusion.

With yet another article about the crazed parenting of preschoolers and the associated hierarchy of activities in today�s New York Times, it seems strange to me that all of our obsessions seems to be on reading or language (this includes foreign languages) and music. Why aren�t we doing science in preschool? Preschoolers seem to have a natural aptitude for it and I really think teaching the way to get from idea to experiment to result is incredibly beneficial in the long term, both in terms of getting kids excited about education and also for giving them some tools to help organize their thinking. I�m not saying the other things aren�t important, but it seems like kind of a strange oversight to me.

* * * * *

That�s all I�ve got for today. My dissertation is taking all my energy of late. I�ve been thinking of little else. Although I did have a really weird dream about my book group last night where one of the members kept taking off her dress to reveal a white bikini covered in words. I have no idea what that was supposed to symbolize. In the dream I didn�t notice what the words said, but I did not the font �Garamond.

1 people said it like they meant it

 
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