Kathryn also linked to a brief article reflecting on the Orthodox practice of the mother staying home to rest, not attending church or going out unnecessarily, for 40 days after birth, when both mother and baby are welcomed back into the church and the baby is baptized. Lots of good reminders for all new mothers here!

Those who know me know that names are one of my favorite things. I love names. I love what they mean, what they signify, and how people seem to “grow into” their names. I have always loved my name in particular. I remember in first grade, my teacher made these beautiful silhouettes of each student by having us sit in front of an overhead projector light and tracing our profiles onto black paper and cutting them out. Then she wrote our names and their meanings underneath. Arielle, “lion of God.” After studying Hebrew, it was apparent how literal the name is - “Ari” - lion. “El” - God. I have always felt that my name was something to live up to.

I especially love the meanings of names, and often look up the meanings of the names of people I meet. I’m often surprised at how well their name suits them. I’ve also looked up probably hundreds of names for future children (don’t worry, I won’t use them all!), always thinking of what I would be “bestowing” on a child with a particular name.

Since becoming Orthodox, naming a child has taken on even more significance, as we follow the custom of the earliest Christians to bestow the name of a beloved saint on Christian children, thereby entrusting the child to the prayers and intercessions of a particular saint throughout their whole lives. The priest “names” them on the eighth day after their birth with a prayer at the family’s home, and this is the name they are called as they receive the Holy Mysteries throughout their life - at baptism and chrismation, as they partake of the Eucharist, at marriage and the anointing of the sick, at their ordinations should they be ordained, and at their funeral. Many of you may remember that at our wedding, because Paul and I have both given names and “Christian” names, we were called Paul Timothy and Arielle Juliana. This is because Timothy and Juliana are our names in the Church. Our children, being born into the church, will be given Christian names at birth. Our children will be brought up knowing their saint as an integral part of their Christian family, knowing about their life and asking for their prayers. I know my own patron saint, St. Juliana of Lazarevo, has become a very important part of my life, and someone who I turn to for her intercessions often, especially now that I am becoming a mother, as she was the mother of thirteen and and STILL managed to become a very blessed saint!

This morning I read the reflections on naming a child by Kathryn, whose beautiful blog I just love. She tells the wonderful story of how her last baby, Gregory John, received his name (and please read the story - she is much better at explaining the importance of a Christian name than I am!), and this story reminded both Kathryn (who is due with number six in six weeks!) and myself about how we should go about choosing names for our children. People who are entering the Orthodox Church and therefore choosing a Christian name and a patron saint are often told, “you do not choose a saint, but a saint chooses you” meaning that the saints will often make it clear to you who is meant to be your patron. I have been thinking and thinking about what our child’s name should be, and of course it is a joint decision between Paul and I, but Kathryn’s post reminded me that it is much more important to pray that God would make it clear to us what our children’s names should be and who they should be named after. It has become less and less important to me to have our baby’s name picked out ahead of time (and of course, we would need at least two anyway!), but more important to me to wait and listen.

Today I started reading Martin Gardner’s collection of essays, The Night is Large, and the first chapter is about symmetry. He points out the pervasive symmetry of our universe, found in fish and crystals and human beings, and wonders why this is so. Mathematics also obeys all kinds of symmetries. But why should the universe be like this? His answer is that mathematics arose from observing the universe. That’s true, but I don’t think it really answers the question. We start out with some simple counting and measuring, but then the shocking thing is that it all works so well, so consistently. We never get to the bottom of it. As he says later, “God is a geometer.” But isn’t it interesting that we are, too? That is the insight expressed by Jacques Maritain, following Thomas Aquinas, when he says that our intelligence is made capable of knowledge; its nature is to know. It possesses an uncanny ability to understand.

Gardner also discusses breaking symmetry. This is when a system of greater symmetry changes to a system of lesser symmetry–for instance, a drop of milk falling into a full bowl. The drop is symmetrical, and the bowl is circular, so they both possess infinite symmetry: they can be reflected by any great circle or diameter, respectively. Contrast this to, say, a five-point star, which can be reflected in only five ways. A circle has more symmetry than any other two-dimensional figure, and a sphere more than any three-dimensional one. But when the drop of milk hits the surface, it creates a crown-like shape with twenty-four points. The system goes from infinite symmetry to twenty-four-fold symmetry.

Scientists imagine a similar loss of symmetry at the Big Bang. Somehow the universe went from a tiny, compact pinpoint to what we see today. The strange thing is how chunky everything is. Matter is organized into galaxies, with vast empty space between them. Within the galaxies are solar systems, again with empty space intervening. Instead of a regular consistency, we see chunks, but also extreme order. Perhaps symmetry breaking can explain how this came about.

I’ve heard similar things before, but it’s always seemed like hand-waving to me. If the universe started symmetrical, how did expansion introduce any asymmetries? This only seems possible if you admit initial impuries or asymmetries. But then you haven’t explained anything, because why should things have started out asymmetrical? That seems inelegant. But upon reading Gardner’s essay, I thought that perhaps quantum variation could be the answer. Given the erratic movement of atomic particles–or to be more precise, their probabilistic location–you would get asymmetries as soon as time starts moving. And those tiny asymmetries could blossom into the chunkiness we see today.

Gardner remarks that this is one instance of chaos theory. People love to throw around that word, and it was especially popular in the 90s (when this essay was published), but sometimes it’s hard to tell what it means. As far as I’ve been able to gather, chaos theory studies systems in which tiny details can produce unexpected large-scale results. (Sometimes you hear the opposite: that chaos theory studies how order arises from chaos. But I think these people are just making it up.) The classic example is a butterfly flapping its wings and causing a hurricane. The details are significant and interact in irreducible ways, so you cannot simplify the picture with formulae or rules. All you can do is work out the details algorithmically and see what you get. In the case of the Big Bang, the idea is that you get large-scale effects (galaxies) from small-scale details (quantum fluctations).

Gardner also connects chaos theory to fractals. Now I hear this all the time, so that it seems I never get one without the other, but I’ve never understood their relation. A fractal is just some pattern that is the same at any level of magnification. It is a pattern that contains itself repeated again and again in smaller and smaller copies. A Sierpinski triangle is a simple example; a Mandelbrot set a more complex one. But what does this have to do with chaos theory? Are all fractals chaotic? You could say that a Mandelbrot set is kind of chaotic, but not a Sierpinski triangle. Do chaotic systems act like fractals? The opposite actually seems true: if in chaotic systems the details afford no way to deduce the big picture, then they are precisely not fractals, because there the big picture is always a perfect mirror of the details, and vice versa. So I don’t get it. Why do people connect fractals with chaos theory? What is their relation?

My friend Sally brought me over a jar of sourdough starter last week, and I made my first batch last night. I am a definite fan. I’ve always loved sourdough bread (the more sour, the better!) and I really like the long rising times. Makes bread making much more flexible. I’ve wrecked several batches of my normal whole wheat yeasted bread by starting it and then getting held up running errands, thus letting it over-rise, which makes it super dense on the bottom and full of air bubbles on top.

I was pretty sure I was doing the sourdough wrong the entire time. I do think I left it a bit too wet, so it’s a little dense, but I took beautifully risen, crusty, free-form loaves out of the oven last night. Paul and I ate about half a loaf while we watched three episodes of Lost (finally finished Season 4! Now we can watch Season 5 - don’t tell me ANYTHING!)

My next project is to do the sourdough according to this tutorial. She mixes it up as a really wet dough (in a stock pot, mixing with a big rolling pin), doesn’t knead it, pours it into bread pans, and lets it rise for seven hours or more. This has several perks - it allows the sourdough to ferment the flour for long enough to break down the phytates (as opposed to my sponge/dough timing, where the sponge sits for 8 hours, but the dough for only 2-3), it is more flexible since I could make it in the morning, go to work and then cook it in the evening without any intermediate steps, and it’s a whole lot less messy. Man, did I make a disgusting mess trying to knead that wet sticky dough on the counter. At least I remembered to take my wedding rings off this time.

I will update as the sourdough experiments continue. With the sourdough, yeast bread, yogurt, Paul’s soon-to-be beer making project, and my soon-to-be kefir or kombucha experiments and whatever else I can find to grow yeast and bacteria in, we are well on our way to Paul’s projection of growing critters on our countertop four days out of seven. It may just become seven days out of seven.

Tonight is my first foray into homemade falafel.. Not sure why I haven’t made it before - I make more Middle Eastern food than any other kind, and I grew up eating falafel (my mom made the kind out of a mix) and ate the Egyptian version (ta’amayya, made with fava beans) nearly every day when I lived in Egypt. Looks easy enough. I’ll also whip up some hummus and tahina sauce, but I don’t have time to make any pita, so I got some at the Middle Eastern grocery that I am so excited to have found. They have everything there! Including haloumi, which the husband loves.

UPDATE: The falafel was a great success - so good! I made some hummus and tahina sauce to go with it, along with tomatoes and cucumbers and bottled harissa (hot sauce).

I am so glad I have a crock pot. My mom never had one, so I didn’t know how useful they were. Not only do I use it to make yogurt overnight and chicken dinners while we’re at church, but I am always cooking up dry beans while I’m at work. I’m not sure how I would make half the things I make if I couldn’t cook them while I’m at work. There are too many things to do between 6 pm and 9 pm to worry about cooking beans for three hours. My crock pot is faithfully cooked up chickpeas for eight hours while I was at work today. Being able to cook them for so long (after soaking overnight) also makes really good hummus - they’re nice and soft, so they make a really smooth creamy hummus.

I took a bunch of other pictures of food this week. I’m sure most of you don’t want to see all my food, so I’ll put them behind the link…

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So I was cleaning up after dinner tonight and I was struck by my latest million-dollar idea: extreme dishwashing! It would be a gameshow where contestants compete for prizes by racing to wash a load of dishes first. Sounds boring? Well, you have neglected to consider–ginsu knives!

On the show, lying beneath the soapy suds, will be knives, pizza cutters, cuisinart blades, lids cut from tin cans, even piranahs! Contestants will be penalized for each finger they lose. If you want to produce such a show–or hear any of my other brilliant ideas–just send me an email. . . .

With the economy struggling along, I keep hearing people talk about the collapse of civilization, like the good old Y2K scare. I think these fears are wildly unrealistic. I worry about our president’s attacks on liberty, and I worry about runaway inflation, but I don’t worry about collapse. Nonetheless, there’s nothing wrong with learning some self-reliance, right? You don’t have to be prepping for the apocalypse to prefer making to buying.

Our home is a do-it-yourself kind of place. Arielle makes her own household cleaners, and I’ve made shelves for our extra-narrow closet. We especially seem to enjoy growing things. Arielle makes bread almost every week, and lately she’s been making yogurt, too. Now she wants to start making sourdough. Meanwhile I’m trying to save money to buy beer-brewing equipment. So we’re growing critters on our counter probably three days out of seven. If disaster strikes, we’ll have plenty of yogurt and booze.

But we’ll need a lot more than that to fend of disaster if modern resources fail us. This morning, just as a thought experiment, I asked Arielle what would be really valuable, if civilization just ground to a halt. Say we had no electric grid and no more gasoline. What would be just too valuable to buy? Surely one thing is medicine, right? And one big slice of medicine is antibiotics.

Now, penicillin is the original antibiotic, and it’s just mold, right? So that got me thinking: couldn’t we make our own penicillin? With rising medical costs, wouldn’t this be big savings? Besides, I’m sure commercial penicillin contains all kinds of preservatives, so it probably causes cancer and birth defects and autism. I think I even read somewhere that phamaceutical companies, in an effort to speed up production, are now injecting penicillin with FGH (Fungal Growth Hormone), which has been alleged to cause premature meiosis in humans. So I think to be safe, we really should start growing our own. Besides, it would be a rewarding and enjoyable experience. So stick it to Big Pharma and grow your own penicillin!

. . . So after writing this post, I did some research, and it turns out there are people who have really worried about this and others who seem less worried.

I thought a script to check our website for broken links might come in handy, so I decided to whip something up in ruby. The script takes a starting page, visits it, follows all its links, and keeps going as long as it’s still in the original domain. There is also an option to exclude certain portions of your site from being checked. I call the script like this:

$ linkcheck -e '^http://jungwirths\.com/gallery/.*' jungwirths.com

It was fun trying out something a little bigger. I’ve written a few other scripts in ruby lately; perhaps I’ll post them later.

All my work so far has been with ruby 1.8. I know 1.9 is out now, so I’d like to get it installed eventually. The Unicode support in 1.8 is pathetic. I found this out by trying to write a od-like program for UTF-8 files that mix English with polytonic Greek. I’m not sure what Unicode is like in 1.9. I haven’t been able to find anything very revealing from googling. It looks like they did something, though it was controversial. There was a lot of argument on the ruby mailing list a couple years ago. But for the life of me, I can’t find anything that explains what the final decisions were.

In my opinion Java gets Unicode just right: all strings are UTF-16, and encoding conversions happen on I/O. For instance, to read a UTF-8 file, you use a FileReader initialized to convert from that encoding. There are also I/O classes to handle binary data. The programmer’s job is simple, because Strings always act the same, and they just do the right thing. It is a very effective use of modularization and separation of concerns. But I don’t think ruby went this route, because for various reasons Unicode is unpopular in Japan. I hope the ruby approach isn’t too painful. I enjoy ruby a lot, but I can’t imagine using it in production with such remedial capabilities. Unicode for me is a real deal-breaker.

Anyway, the code for the linkcheck program is below the fold:
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. . . introducing, Lentil Jungwirth!

Here’s a closeup of his or her cute head:

Yes, you heard right. We said his or her–you all will have to wait as long as we do to find out if Lentil is a boy lentil or a girl lentil! The ultrasound tech had to record the sex, but we closed our eyes. At least Paul better had closed his eyes! I told him no peeking.

You know, I imagine that women don’t often show off ultrasound pictures to coworkers. But I came straight from my ultrasound appointment next door to work, and had my pictures with me, so I showed a couple people who I know well. I do work with a bunch of nurses and midwives, after all.

I imagine most people look at ultrasound pictures, and say things about how cute the baby is, and how clear you can see its features, even if it really looks like a blurry, skinny alien. I bring mine in, and the first things my midwife colleagues exclaim are, “Look at those bones!” and “Hey look, an anterior placenta!”

Just so you know, it is impolite to say that someone’s baby looks like a skinny alien, even if his or her mamma said it first.

This video is just unbelievable. The former leader of the free world, whose wife was nearly the current leader of the free world, being interviewed by the brain surgeon that our current president nominated for Surgeon General, states over and over again that embryos are not fertilized. Wow, will wonders ever cease? Maybe they need to take one of those grade school sex education classes that the former president and his wife were so supportive of.

Sorry. I’m usually opposed to snarkiness. But I’m making an exception, because this is ridiculous enough to be snarked.