The love of parents for their children, it is well known, is the purest love of all. There is nothing we would not do for them, and we keep giving to the end of our lives without thought of what we get in return.

The irony is that from an evolutionary point of view, love of one’s children is obviously selfish, since they carry forward one’s genes. It is so perfectly in our self-interest to take care of our children that natural selection would not dream of letting us deliberate about the matter! No, our love is hardwired. We deeply want to give to them, and who cares what it costs?

And because it’s hardwired, that’s why it feels selfless. This is the love that bypasses our brains and inhabits our bones.

[19 January 2017]

Of course it’s trivial in principle, but one of my notes from 1990 records that I found it surprisingly tricky in practice to calculate how far Perth is from Boston, based on their latitudes and longitudes. In fact I remember working out the formula while on the train crossing the Nullarbor Plain.

It’s not tricky any more. On a whim I just asked my phone, “How far is Perth from Boston?”, and it responded instantly in a friendly man’s voice. “Perth, Australia is about 11,621 miles from Boston, Massachusetts as the crow flies.”

However, it is still only 2017. I followed up with “How far is that in kilometers?” and the friendly man responded, “Sorry, I don’t know where that is”.

[13 January 2017]

About 19% of SIAM’s non-student members are women, but at the next SIAM Annual Meeting, 9 out of 16 invited speakers will be women. These figures imply that the fraction invited to speak will be around 5.5 times higher for women than for men.

That’s the math, which is easy. The politics? Not so easy.

[6 January 2017]