I feel so lucky. I haven't had to mean yet this morning. o/

But it's only time, isn't it?

I don't know how you mean mommies live with yourself.

If one makes 2 onerous phone calls and doesn't actually get through to anyone does it still count as an onerous task?

Bonny, in professional non-profits in NC (a considerably cheaper area than yours, I believe), the job you're describing starts at $80,000, with a full benefits package. I expect that in pricier markets one would be lucky to get someone for under six figures. So, no $20/hr does not strike me as reasonable pay.

If one makes 2 onerous phone calls and doesn't actually get through to anyone does it still count as an onerous task?

If you left messages, I say yes.

Yesterday D said, "Let's skip the [online gaming] tonight, snuggle up in bed, watch a movie, and eat ice cream."

I just went to a talk on cultural issues in broadening participation in mathematics. It was weird. The first half of the talk was the (middle-aged, white, Jewish) guy talking about how he grew up in the projects and went to public school. Then he talked about all his black friends. Then he showed some illustrations from the 1800s where black and Irish people were portrayed as animals next to the civilized Anglo-Saxons. Then the second half of the talk, he listed a bunch of mathematicians, and for each one, he played some music by a classical composer who was born around the same time. For the more modern ones, the music was all weird and atonal, and he called it "stagnant." Then he played some jazz by composers born at about the same time as those composers and mathematicians, and it was all exciting. And he told us that the classical music establishment would have benefited from some jazz influence, but it was kept out because it was black music. And that, if we reach out to get minority students into our departments, they might create the mathematical equivalent of jazz.

Oh, and somewhere in the middle of all that, he raised the question of whether there's enough Irish-American participation in mathematics, and he quoted an Irish friend of his as saying that the Irish are the black people of Europe.

Honestly, I don't think I got anything at all out of this talk.

if we reach out to get minority students into our departments, they might create the mathematical equivalent of jazz.

Oh, and somewhere in the middle of all that, he raised the question of whether there's enough Irish-American participation in mathematics, and he quoted an Irish friend of his as saying that the Irish are the black people of Europe.

Anyone else having flashbacks to The Commitments? Just me?

That said, I expect that encouraging a wide variety of people (racial, gender, religious, country of origin, etc.) to participate in a given field will enrich it. Not sure if your speaker found the best way to convey that, though.

he quoted an Irish friend of his as saying that the Irish are the black people of Europe.

OMG, eyeroll. My grandmother (rest her soul) used to go on about this all the time until I finally was like, um NO. I didn't change her mind, but she stopped talking about it at least.

broadening participation in mathematics.

I do not think this means what he thinks it means.

I'm confused... was he using the Irish as a substitute for black? Like, it was actually about there not being much math participation by blacks, but he couldn't say that for some reason?

Laga, you know how beyond happy I am for you, right? It's about time!!

Also, smonster, if I haven't already said so, I am also giddy for you.

That said, I expect that encouraging a wide variety of people (racial, gender, religious, country of origin, etc.) to participate in a given field will enrich it. Not sure if your speaker found the best way to convey that, though.

I went into this talk assuming that we were all taking that as a given, and that he'd be talking about strategies for recruiting and maintaining diverse students and faculty. He mentioned that his department has significantly increased African-American and Latino/a graduate student enrollment in the past decade, but he didn't talk at all about how they did this. Just this weird jazz thing that took up 25 minutes of his hour-long talk.

I'm confused... was he using the Irish as a substitute for black? Like, it was actually about there not being much math participation by blacks, but he couldn't say that for some reason?

I have no idea. He first mentioned the Irish thing when he was talking about when he was in elementary school in NYC in the fifties, and his Irish-American teacher told the class, "You think you have it bad in this city? The Irish had it worse." And then he came back to the Irish thing a few times, with no real purpose that I could see.