Indoctrination
I read Laura's post about baby propoganda on Saturday before heading to Dan's Astrophysical Sciences Winter Solstice Party. (Yeah, it really is called that.)
One of the very senior researchers in Dan's department reminds me of someone from Caltech. He wears his hair to his waist and never wears shoes. Well, I did see him in shoes once - in flip flops during a snow storm. This is Princeton, home of the preppies, though, and quite cold at times, so its pretty strange.
He decided to try to indoctrinate John on Saturday night. At first, whenever he saw John, he said, "Bessel function" with the justification that it'd be pretty neat if a child's first words were that. Then he changed to "Half a tooth fairy." (A "tooth fairy" is an unjustified assumption made by a scientist.) By the end of the night, he was alternating between "Bessel function" and "J-zero."
He told us, "Neither of my daughters said 'Bessel Function' as their first words, but you two are *both* scientists, so there's some hope for you."
One of the very senior researchers in Dan's department reminds me of someone from Caltech. He wears his hair to his waist and never wears shoes. Well, I did see him in shoes once - in flip flops during a snow storm. This is Princeton, home of the preppies, though, and quite cold at times, so its pretty strange.
He decided to try to indoctrinate John on Saturday night. At first, whenever he saw John, he said, "Bessel function" with the justification that it'd be pretty neat if a child's first words were that. Then he changed to "Half a tooth fairy." (A "tooth fairy" is an unjustified assumption made by a scientist.) By the end of the night, he was alternating between "Bessel function" and "J-zero."
He told us, "Neither of my daughters said 'Bessel Function' as their first words, but you two are *both* scientists, so there's some hope for you."
1 Comments:
At 1:46 PM,
Laura said…
Well, that's his problem, he can't stick with just one phrase . . . he'd have far more success if he just limited himself to sayiing "Bessel function" to babies.
Samuel is now at the fun age where he will willingly try to repeat almost anything you say to him, or just things you say near him. Suddenly I'm getting all my weird little speech pattern quirks reflected back at me.
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