Photography: Snow Days

As a I mentioned before, we had a big snowstorm this week and had a snow day from work.  One of the advantages of living in a townhouse complex is that the community organization hires people to plow the snow.  One of the disadvantages is that they are not always prompt.  In this case, although they had plowed a narrow path in the street, there was still a pile of snow on and behind our car, so we couldn't leave.  There's starting to be so much snow that there's no place to put it.  We were naive and completely unprepared, so we didn't even have a shovel---I had to move the snow using an old dust pan, but it worked.

Digging out the car in the morning

After we dug ourselves out, it was actually a little relaxing and we spent the day walking around the neighborhood and taking some pictures.  Afterwards, we ended up going to three different stores before we finally found a place that still had shovels in stock.  I guess we weren't the only ones unprepared...

Running out of places to put the snow

Science: Snow Days

Living in the Northeast, we've been hit with what seems like a major snowstorm every week for this winter.  We've already had two snow days from work this winter, which is more than I can remember since I started my job, and it's only January.  We're already experiencing the snowiest January ever and we're only 20 inches from breaking the seasonal snowfall record.  This week, after 19 inches of now fell, New York City shut down its schools for a day, only the seventh time since 1978.  The temperature hasn't been that cold, which has resulted in dense, wet snow packs that are harder to move as well as slicker, icier roads when the melt freezes overnight.  I have to say, I'm pretty impressed with how fast the area has been able to clean the roads and plow the snow, but there's a breaking point---we're starting to run out of space to put the snow.  New Jersey roads, never the most wide to begin with, are starting to shrink as the snowbanks creep into the outer lanes.

So what's causing all of this unusual weather?  There's a hypothesis that the colder/wetter weather is due to an arctic bulge or oscillation.  As the ice in the arctic melts, this causes a feedback loop where the darker ocean surface absorbs more heat, in turn causing warmer arctic temperatures.  The warmer air rises and causes the jet stream to bulge out much farther south than normal.  The jet stream, which normally acts as a fence to keep the cold air contained over the arctic, then allows the cold air to escape over the mid United States, causing colder weather.  The cold weather hits the warmer, moister Atlantic air causing intense snowfall over the Eastern seaboard.

Of course, the elephant in the room is what is causing the arctic to warm.  Some atmospheric scientists are careful not to draw a trend based on the recent winters, particularly since there are other complicating factors such as La Nina/El Nino effects in the Pacific.  But it does seem like whether we want to admit it or not, the climate is changing, and we better make sure that we're ready for that.

By the way, it looks like there's another system with "significant snowfall" this week as well, just in time for a global conference we're having at work.  Good timing.

Homeward Deja Vu

Over Christmas break, my wife and I flew back to see my parents in Fargo over the holidays.  It's always good to see my family---ever since I left the nest for college, I've lived away from home and winter break is one of the few times where I can be with my family for an extended period of time.  Still, visiting home always gives me a slightly uncanny feeling, almost like walking through a dream.  Things aren't as they once seemed.  It's an intense feeling of deju vu.  Things feel familiar but are slightly off in some way, as if my memories are colored by filters.

While my parents still lives in Fargo, they no longer live in the house that I call home.  They moved to a new house shortly after I moved away.  Now when I visit them, I stay in a new bed in a new room in a new house that feels like a stranger.  It's a nice house, almost certainly nicer than their old one in nearly every way, but I just don't have a connection with it.  It's just another place to rest my head.  My things are still packed away in boxes hidden in the basement gathering dust and cobwebs.  I've driven by our old house, the home I grew up in, and the new owners have given it a face lift.  They've put up new siding, taken down the backyard fence, and changed the landscaping.  While the bones are still there, I can hardly recognize her.  I guess you can never really go home again.

Beyond that, a significant portion of my childhood was spent at my parents' workplace.  We were a working family.  My parents have been steadfast in the restaurant business and I grew up kitchen in the back.  As I grew older, I spent time washing dishes and busing tables.  However, my parents have moved restaurant locations several times as new opportunities presented themselves.  They are currently located in the recently renovated food court in the West Acres mall, a location they moved in after I moved out.  After years spent growing up in those other restaurant locations, this new one doesn't speak to me.  While the food remains the same, the old faces are gone and I no longer know it or the workers keep it running.

But at least my parents are still there.  None of my childhood friends, or at least childhood friends that I've kept in touch with, remain there.  Like me, they have all moved on.  As a result, visiting home sometimes feels like visiting a ghost town, particularly as my parents are busy with work.  Even my old high school has been completely renovated.  In this case, not only is the facade new, even the bones are different.  Inside, the places where my friends and I used to hang out have disappeared, like they never existed, replaced by new lockers, classrooms, teachers, and students.

Even the public library, one of my favorite places, is completely different.

Fargo is in the midst of its awkward, teenage years.  It's been growing up since I grew up.  When I was small, the town was small enough that you knew everything about it.  You could get anywhere in no time and as kids, we had free rein roaming around the neighborhood.  But Fargo has grown up and out---like a gangly teenager, it's had its growth spurt but doesn't quite know what to do with itself.    A typical suburb with an expanding waistline, it feels like the same recognizable businesses and homes repeat themselves over and over.  Every part of the city feels familiar but slightly off, like it's been stretched out.  Unlike a typical suburb, there's no big city to escape to.

Fargo still feels small enough that you feel like you should know everyone but just large enough that you don't.  It's filled with familiar things that are unfamiliar.  It's a home that's not a home.

Battling Tiger Mothers

Several days ago, a friend linked to a provocative Wall Street Journal Article titled Why Chinese Mothers are Superior, an excerpt from the book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua.  The author argues that the reason that Chinese children are typically considered more successful is due to the style of parenting that the "Chinese mother" employs.  The author defends an extremely strict parenting method that essentially barricades the child at home with no friends or play and forces them to practice or study over and over again until perfection is achieved.  This often requires some "special" motivation, so she defends physically restraining the child and emotionally and verbally abusing them.  Essentially, the parent tells the child that they are worthless unless they achieve perfection.  It's a break them down, build them up strategy.

In comparison, "Western parenting", which places an unreasonable emphasis on the child's emotions and feelings wanting them to be happy, results in lazy, unsuccessful children who never reach their full potential.  The Western parent doesn't want to see their child suffer, so if their child faces a difficult challenge, they let them give up.  The Chinese mother believes that her child is strong while the Western parent assumes that their child is fragile.

There's something a little fishy about this argument and my first thought was:  Meh, the author sounds like a closet sociopath defending a twisted form of child rearing Stockholm syndrome to produce soulless automatons.

However, taking a little more time to think about it, she's definitely a nutcase.  One quote from her article is "What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it.  I think that quote speaks volumes about her priorities.

Some more developed thoughts I wrote later:

This was probably the most arrogant article that I've read in some time, even if it is (hopefully) mostly tongue in cheek. There are many, many things wrong with it, although I suspect that the WSJ intended to publish such a provocative piece to generate more page hits (which is what passes for journalism these days).

The problem with this method of "breaking them down and building them up" is that it raises children that are dependent on external support. It really is like Stockholm syndrome. You get beat down focused on the negative and are only considered adequate if you do what someone tells you to and you get an A. And once you aren't able to get that A, you are not mentally or emotionally equipped to deal with that "failure". It's teaching from fear rather than love. How is that preparing your child for the future? Of course, it's better to not let the child give up and encourage them to get good grades, but that is just a means to an end, not the end itself. Her argument that Western parenting assumes "fragility rather than strength" is a straw man---you have to have the right definition of strength and success. I can easily flip her argument completely and say that Eastern parenting assumes fragility since it presumes the child's success is nothing without external approval. This is consistent with a culture that values "face" over all else, how you look over what you are, superficiality over substance. Notice in her article that her proud moment was when other parents came and marveled over her daughter.

Of course, with a large enough distribution, you can always cherry pick enough outliers to make your point like she has. But instead of relying on just personal anectdote like the author, the empirical data shows that Eastern parenting has been correlated with an increased rate of depression and suicide (interesting how she eschews real statistics with glib superiority comments). But if we want to use personal anectdote, for every Carnegie Hall peformer, I've seen orders of magnitude more flame-outs.

But beyond the psychological/sociologoical issues, I just don't think this type of teaching really works in the long run. Indeed, having worked with and taught arguably the best students from this culture, I'm not impressed. Rote memorization will only get you so far. I've taught students who could get a perfect GRE score and have straight A's but had no understanding of the material. It's like someone having memorized the route that a GPS has given them without really understanding where they're going. They can always get you that specific place without fail but will never be able to do more than that. The problem that many people make is that at the highest levels science and math, similar to music, are not rote memorization but require leaps of creativity that this method does not and cannot instill. Grades are not the goal, understanding is. Moreover, another aspect is that success in the real world is often dependent more on social skills than just good grades, and locking your children at home will not develop that.

Finally, this article was written at least a decade too late if not more to be topical. In fact, current Eastern parenting is completely opposite. Due to the large transfer of wealth in recent years and the one child policy, many Chinese families are now suffering from "the little emperor" syndrome where the power dynamic has shifted to the spoiled child.

Of course the best parenting walks a middle road, and it's not the false binary model she wants it to be. That's not to say that the current "Western" anti-responsibility/anti-intellectualism climate is anything but tragic itself, but I would say the author's advocation of this extreme is far more harmful than the other. Incidentally, this was *not* how I was raised. I was raised to motivate myself to excel. As a result, I don't need approval from other people to feel successful. As much as she scoffs at it, I was raised to find learning inherently interesting and fun, and I'm not afraid to try new things and fail.

I think this article unusually bothered me because, although I am Chinese, I was raised with "Western parenting" and am happy as a result.  Moreover, I see this style of parenting around me all the time.  The Asian families at work place a ridiculous amount of pressure on their kids, trot them out for bragging rights, and suffer dysfunctional family relationships.  Plus, working with such apparently "perfect" coworkers is often an exercise in frustration.

I'm not the only one who's reacted strongly to this piece.  Some other dissenting opinions:  Is Amy Chua Right When She Explains Why Chinese Mothers are Superior?

Winter Wonderland

As we brace for another snowstorm to hit the East Coast (the snow is already starting to fall), apparently this is a relatively rare time when 49 out of the 50 states have snow on the ground.  The lone holdout?  Florida, although apparently it did snow there several weeks ago, it melted and there is no snow currently on the ground.

Coming back from North Dakota where we had snow drifts high enough that kids were able to climb up and dunk a basketball hoop, watching people down in the South flounder with a couple of inches of snow is amusing.

Still, seeing some of the satellite imagery is a little frightening...the map almost looks like the start of a new ice age...