Teylers Museum

We went to the Teylers Museum in Haarlem. It's one of the oldest public museums in the world, the only older being the Louvre. The Teylers folk point out that that the Louvre may have opened a year earlier, but it wasn't excactly by choice.

Teylers is somewhat eclectic, but the main theme is 18th and 19th century science.  This was a very exciting time in human history as we finally began to believe that the universe was comprehensible and that it may operate according to sets of internally consistent rules and that these rules might be ferreted out by means of the scientific method.  Galileo and Newton of course set the stage for this revolution with the examples of celestial and classical mechanics, and the early advances in optics nearly a century earlier.  In the 19th century the unification of the laws of optics with the laws electricity and magnetism gave impetus to the idea of a grand unified theory of everything.  

Sundry Scientific stuff

Uranium glass candlestick holder

Telescopes and microscopes

A spectrometer

A table of states of polarization of light

A generator/condenser for generating huge static-electric discharge

One of the main halls

Part of the large fossil collection

Word of the day

natuurkunde physics. Natuurkunde heette natural philosophy in engels in de 19e eeuw.

One week in

Excuses

OK, so the pace has fallen off a bit.  First I suffered unusually badly from the jet lag (my ever greater age?).  Then, we were having too much fun to stop and write the blog.  

Touristy stuff

We've done a few touristy things.  We went to the museum of the big old windmill in Leiden,  Molen van Valk. I went to Delft to work and the family came along. They went to a tile factory and Ethan painted his own tile. I'll post a pic when we get it back from firing. Delft china really is pretty.

The return from Delft was a bit ugly.  Deborah started coming down with something involving a fever and sore throat.  We then had a walk that was too far for an already-tired 5-year-old.  So I wound up carrying him for a km or two.  Then we missed the train and had to catch the next.  Then when we got back we decided to try the bus system and wound up waiting a long time for a bus.  My Dutch is getting better though and I managed to navigate the system talking to busdrivers in the local tongue.  I don't think anyone else found this comforting.  We still had to walk half a km or so after the bus and poor Ethan was about to bust a bladder.  He made it with me carrying again and running.  The one-hour trip had taken almost three.  All in all, a good work-out and a fun day.  Deborah has sworn off the busses and will only bike to the city center for the train now.  

A cultural observation

I managed to get a bank account.  Americans may not appreciate that this is a real accomplishment here.  They need proof of residency here and back in the us, passport, a letter from the host institution,  and various and sundry other bits of bureaucratic detritus.  

Anyway, some fellow Americans I met had not had such good luck and after a little conversation I think I know why.  They expected it to work and were a little upset (though I expect still perfectly nice) that it is not a simple matter of walking in and opening an account.    I expected failure and only showed mild disappointment when I was told that it would take a few days to process.  My disappointment elicited a respond of eager helpfulness and concern and got the application expidited.  

The Dutch are at once dogmatically egalitarian and still somehow caste-aware.  I let it be known that I was a university professor ( a fairly high-status position here ), but only by way of giving my card with all my address information.  I never said "Oh, I'm a professor and I need this done promptly." I took the attitude that I was just a little guy caught up in a confusing system and I was completely appreciative of anything my friend the clerk could do.  If he couldn't help me further, that was ok, I was sure he had done his best to help me since we're just in this together.  Generally, this is the right attitude in Holland.  I like it like that.  I am just a little guy trying to get by in the world and I do feel that we are just in this all together. 

The system here has a negative compressibility.  Start to demand things be done and they will get swallowed in the vestigal remains of the Dutch empire, the bureaucracy.   Appear the pleasant and innocent victim of the same bureaucracy and people jump to help.    

Science 

I have checked in and gotten offices at both Vrije Universitieit (VU) and TU Delft.  I have met a lot of interesting people, but so far the high-light is Hans Blok.  I haven't really done much myself yet other than chit-chat.  That should change this coming week with some real work.

The Family

The family seems to be settling well and adjusting to the Dutch life.  Deborah loves the relative simplicity of the lifestyle here.  I agree.  No bloody car and biking is easy because everybody bikes and the bikes rule the road.  Marilee is doing really well, especially considering she's never before been outside the US and she's got a broken arm.  I don't think she's learning any Dutch, but she gets out there and isn't intimidated.  

Ethan started school today.  He is learning a little Dutch, but I would not by any stretch say he speaks it.  He had a great time.  His teacher looked a little amazed at the end of the day and told us that he just watched what was going on and followed along.  He got on well with the other kids and built with blocks and played tag.  It helps that the Dutch have muchlower expectations for their kids at this age than we do in the states.  They are just learning their letters while Ethan and his classmates in Illinois were reading simple books.  Anyway, he's the greatest boy ever and continues to amaze.  

Leif is finally getting on schedule and is happy to always be on the go.  It's his favorite phrase now actually: "Go, go."  The Dutch word lief is pronounced the same way as Leif and means "sweet."

Pics

Ethan at the playground by his new school.

People skating on the canal.

Deborah with Leif in the bakfiets.

The boys help me make use of the jet lag insomnia and build the bike and tagalong.

Leif: toolmaster.

Second post and already faltering

Another post.  Mostly just to try to develop the habit.  

Gads.

OK.  I read the first entry and realized there are probably some problems with the approach I'm taking.  I was hoping to write in a somewhat generic style without too much reference to the particulars of my own life.  I was hoping to avoid the narcissism that now seems unavoidable in  these public- diary-type blogs.  Well, it seems generic alright, and so boring I'm not even interested.

So here are some particulars to be followed with more on other nights:

My name is P. Scott Carney.  I am a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois.  I got my PhD in Physics from the University of Rochester in 1999.  I was an undergrad in physics at the U of I.   I grew up in upstate New York.  My wife is a full-time mom and formerly a development officer with the university.  We've been married ten years.  my boys are 5 and 1.  

I'm fairly athletic, or at least active.  I bike a lot.  I am a weightlifter (all one word, if you don't know the significance, you won't care). I play basketball very badly but am getting a little better.  Today I  dislocated my right pinky at two joints playing ball.  Lucky one of my friends on the faculty is a bad-ass martial artist and he came over after four other guys had been tugging at the thing (yes- please pull my finger, no really, look, it's hideously twisted...) and just popped the thing straight.  He might have sneered at us a little for our unmanliness, but I think he's too nice for that.  

I also submitted a paper for consideration in a pretty good optics journal today.  I do this far too often.  That is, I participate in the extreme overproduction of scientific literature.  Much of it goes totally unread because, if it didn't, all scientists would do is read the literature. Sigh... anyway, I try to only submit things I am really excited about and genuinely believe may help someone else in her own research or might be important in another field.  I have to admit though that  after a few years I have become consistently unimpressed with my own work.  So I think the stuff I'm doing now is good and important, but ask me again in 2012.    OK, I take that back.  I still like two of my old papers.  I have 55 peer-reviewed publications.  

OK.  I'm going to take some more pain meds and go to bed.

Here's apic of my poor swollen pinky.  Whah.  And yes, those are diaper ans wipes behind me because that's how I roll.