Physics, mathematics and love life?

[rewebster]

My ongoing astronomy project(s) with far-flung collaborators has not bothered my wife of 32+ years. She knows that my forced social isolation is best addressed by letting me focus my energies on research that is time-intensive but that can be done on my own schedule. I have been devoting a lot of time recently to my vegetable garden (including mold and mildew remediation efforts to combat the torrential rains). Our first paper was electronically advanced-published by Springer (Journal of Astrophysics and Space Sciences) and is now in print. Soon, the weather will disfavor gardening, and I'll be able to devote more hours to our next paper. My wife will come home from work and find me mining IRSA, NED, HyperLeda, etc for data, and she'll smile, give me a kiss and ask what I want for supper...

BTW, my 2-years-younger cousin is Lockheed-Martin's project leader in the Space Shuttle's HST service mission and he's pretty excited about some of the implications of our recent paper. Kids from the woods of Maine can end up in some interesting places...

it sounds like if YOU keep working on those papers...

 

[Moonbear]

Practice makes perfect. You can't expect to only talk about your work to other people and not bore them to death after 5 mins of conversation.

Absolutely! Unless, of course, you're a museum curator giving a gallery talk. But, yeah, it's not good to be one-dimensional in your interests.

For some reason, people LOVE to talk about sports. I don't watch sports in any way shape or form. But if you do, people will yap on and on about sports with you. Its an easy conversation starter with a perfect stranger...I just stare at them and go uhuh...he made a field goal...uh-huh...yeah...uh-huh...(what the hell's he talking about?)...yep...uh-huh...wow he missed the pass! (pass? who cares!?)...nodding head in agreement. Then I say excuse me and run away....dont look back just RUN...

I feel you there! Though, unless it's a whole group of people talking about sports, in which case there's no hope of them stopping soon and I just find an excuse to walk away, if it's just one-on-one conversation, once they're done talking about the big plays of the game, they can usually be steered toward a new topic. "Oh, speaking of football, how's your son doing? Did he make the team?" or "Speaking of bats, how's your mother-in-law doing?"

Actually, most conversations start out as pretty much "scanning channels," with each person talking a bit about something that interests them, until you hit upon a subject you both enjoy.

 

[BobG]

Are you sure this wasn't somebody's homework assignment?

http://paws.wcu.edu/emcnelis/MATH320/Project2.pdf

 

[glueball8]

I also doing the same

I pissed my potential girl friend in high school because I over used my analytical thinking, probabilities (e.g. I am sure with P of 0.7..) and math/curves in our personal communications .

haha I used Feynman's theory... lmao

 

[Anticitizen]

This seemed relevant:

Many other great, intelligent comics available at xkcd.com!

 

[ephedyn]

are you sure this wasn't somebody's homework assignment?

http://paws.wcu.edu/emcnelis/math320/project2.pdf

lol.

 

[ephedyn]

I think we can't optimize our activities without making teams (that's my socializing - maximizing profits for everyone). Normally, I don't engage in activities that don't have something in return.

(1) +1. I don't think it makes sense to engage in an activity that doesn't have something in return. Perhaps with the exception of tipping the waiter when no one's looking, giving a lone hitchhiker a ride etc. But those are merely convenient social activities (it clearly wouldn't happen if you passed by and didn't have a vehicle, or any money, to begin with). Similarly, socializing at a workplace seems merely convenient rather than sincere (someone else could be in your position and be of entirely equal utility to your colleagues, and swapping your background with him, you find that you probably wouldn't get to know your colleagues nor intend to know them when you pass by them, even though you're the same person).

(2) As some of you are saying, it's better to find someone who's equally passionate about your stuff. Which brings me to the point: aren't the rules of the game very different in our positions? But for instance, in the male perspective, the paucity of females in the academic circle (I'm not sure about molecular biology) makes it a very different situation from the given list of other lines of work which are known for an obsession. Supposing this criterion is accurate, it would imply that it is much easier, quantitatively, for them to find such a person. But this obviously isn't the case (or we'd have widescale problem already)!

(3) Corollary: As it seems, even supposing this criterion is accurate and sufficient for these other lines of work, I must say it is at least insufficient for us. This in turn, implies that there has to be (edit: some differences).

(4) That said, yeah I think it is our imperative to pursue our interests, and that which ensues from it is much more... transcendental(?) than to be hanging out 7 days/week at the bar (and I know people who do this).