Soft Arts

In the first part of 2008, our son Isaac, who had never had a hair cut in his life, started losing all of his hair. Although we took Isaac in for a battery of tests and blood work, no one could really explain what had happened. Isaac went completely bald, and also lost his eyebrows and eyelashes.

Although we still don’t know exactly what happened to him, Isaac’s hair grew completely back over the next year and a half. I finally decided to post this series of pictures because, having visited the sites of numerous families trying to support their children through this affliction, I felt that we need to do our part and make our story available for people in the same situation as our own.

No one is really certain what triggered this, except that our family suffered repeated bouts of the flu lasting up to 3 or 4 weeks during the fall and winter of 2008. Evidently severe depression of one’s system can result in the death of hair follicles. Eventually, as the body recovers, new follicles can appear, which push out the old ones, resulting in an intermediate period of some degree of hair loss.

What is particularly interesting about this condition (if it was actually what Isaac was enduring) is that your hair doesn’t fall out until you’ve actually begun recovering. By the time we saw what was happening and took him in for his blood work he was, by all accounts, healthy as a horse.

Anyway, on with the photo log.

October 13th, 2007 (3 years old, 4 days before his 4th birthday)

February 21st, 2008 (4 years old)

This is one of the last pictures we have of Isaac with all of his hair intact.

April 3rd, 2008 (4 years old)

By now Isaac’s hair had been noticeably thinning for over two months.

May 7th, 2008 (4 years old)

Isaac and I finally agreed to shave his head. His eyebrows are almost completely gone by now.

May 28th, 2008 (4 years old)

Total baldness. No eyebrows or eyelashes at this point. Despite this, he remains an extremely well adjusted little boy, with excellent health, athleticism, and attitude.

September 1st, 2008 (4 years old)

As can be seen in this picture, there was no real change in Isaac’s condition, even after more than three months. At this point I was personally pretty much resigned to the idea that Isaac was going to be completely hairless for the his entire adult life and was working hard to accept this for what it was.

January 1st, 2009 (5 years old)

Isaac’s hair is clearly starting to come back in several places, although the the coverage is still very sparse.

January 21st, 2009 (5 years old)

March 31st, 2009 (5 years old)

Our son has eyebrows again!

October 17th, 2009 (6th birthday)

Although it is shorter than he used to wear it, Isaac’s hair has come back completely. The only abnormality we’ve seen in the last two months was when he got irritated with his bangs and decided to cut them himself.

October 17th, 2009 (6th birthday)

Our boy Isaac, modeling the new astronaut’s flight suit his got for his birthday.

People, let’s face it. Global warming is happening.

That’s a trickier matter. The earth has been much colder, and much warmer, than it currently is. The razor-thin sample of time which we refer to as “recorded history” is hardly a big enough sample to determine what the earth’s “normal” climate is. We just know what we are used to.

The ice at the north and south poles is melting. Asking whether or not it is linked to global climate change is fatuous. YES, the climate is changing, that’s why it is unseasonably cold in Seattle right now, and it is probably why weather patterns have been so disrupted for the last 15 years (El Nino? Katrina? Remember those?).

The real questions are: how much of what we are seeing is being caused by human beings, would this be happening without us, and is there anything we can do to stop it?

A medley of “If I only had a brain,” “If I only had a heart,” “If I only had courage,” sung by my friend and taiji big brother, Gene Burnett.

A few days ago my friend Brett Kelly posted Seven Things You Didn’t Know About Me on his blog, and named me as someone he’d like to see a follow-on post from.

Okay Brett, this one is for you.

1. I grew up in Alaska

Although I was born in Seattle, my parents moved to Anchorage before my first birthday. I grew up with a profoundly handicapped step brother, knew quite a bit of sign language, and most of the handicapped kids in Anchorage by association.

We had a cabin at Big Lake, where I swam, water skied, and jet skied almost daily during the summer, and snow machined during the winter. Our family had a Cessna in a private slip at Spenard Lake, similar to the one shown above.

Anchorage had a very big budget for education, so I was able to spend most of my time glued to the Apple ][s in our junior high school computer lab. Most of my friends and I were in EISI, which was a very novel and life changing program for gifted students.

At this time of my life I was an avowed carnivore and spent a lot of time outdoors. My biological father moved to Ninilchik, and I spent a lot of time tramping around the bush with him and my grandfather, hunting birds and moose, and fishing for halibut and salmon.

2. I went to art school

I am a third generation musician on both sides of my family and, after several years of playing trumpet in Alaska, I eventually shifted my focus to the guitar.

By the time I finished high school I had been accepted as a jazz guitar major at the Cornish College of the Arts. My favorite classes were music theory, ear training and sight singing, rhythm, and piano. My music ensemble class was led by Julian Priester. My classmates included James Bergstrom, who played drums for Alice in Chains at the time, and Pete Droge.

3. I was a cook

After I dropped out of Cornish I decided that I needed a trade, so I got a job as a dishwasher at Arnie’s, a local seafood restaurant in Seattle. Over the next two years I worked my way out of the dish room, first as a prep cook, and then as the day broiler. The pan in the picture was stolen from the restaurant by one of my coworkers and given to me as a going away present.

This job is what kept me focused on my studies the second time around for college. It was, hands down, the worst job I have ever had. On the bright side, success at the job required phenomenal organization, time management skills, and laziness - all of which have served me well in my professional life.

Arnie’s is also where I met my friend Grace, who would introduce me to my future wife about 10 years later.

4. I came very close to majoring in theoretical mathematics

In 1992, Robin Graham, one of my math professors at the University of Washington, sponsored my admission to a 3 week Regional Geometry Institute held in Park City, Utah. I studied conformal mapping, hyperbolic geometry, and got my first hands on experience with NeXT computers, particularly with Mathematica.

It was becoming very apparent that I was much more passionate about pure mathematics than engineering or applied math. My alternative schedule for fall quarter consisted of 4 senior level mathematics courses and introductory Russian, and I half-hoped that my application to the Aeronautics and Astronautics department would be declined. It was accepted, though, and the picture above was on display at Guggenheim Hall (the aeronautics and astronautics building) in the class photos for two years.

5. I have wrecked shit on other planets

My first job after grad school was at Lockheed Martin Astronautics, developing onboard software for the Mars Climate Orbiter, the Mars Polar Lander, and Stardust.

Both MCO and MPL crashed and burned at Mars. The Stardust mission was successful, but another mission we worked on (Genesis, pictured above) crash landed back at earth after completing its mission.

Most of the software that I wrote for MPL and MCO was reused on the 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter, the Mars Phoenix lander, and the Spitzer Space Telescope

6. I am obsessed with the laws of nature

I am obsessed with laws of nature, particularly body forces like gravity and magnetism. Forces like this are easily described, but very poorly understood. Gravity and inertia are incredibly unlikely and non-intuitive, but most of us accept them unquestioningly as a part of our everyday lives.

Knowing why objects resist acceleration may be the key to developing scifi concepts, like inertial dampers or antigravity. Bows and arrows were used long before the principles of motion were understood, but I’m certain that understanding how these phenomena work will get us closer to harnessing them for our own use.

7. I am deeply interested in energy research

My master’s degree was focused on advanced propulsion and energy conversion, and I have a strong interest in energy research, both for spacecraft propulsion and domestic energy resources.

Both fields are going to need serious game-changers, likely including nuclear fusion technology and antimatter systems. Another area of interest, that I’d like to do future work on, involves the consequences of adoption, including pollution, susceptibility to sabotage, potential disaster and disaster recovery scenarios, etc.

Note: I am posting this entry to answer some questions I’ve gotten from people on twitter. This is not an attempt at prosteletyzing: I hate it when people get preachy about food. Your diet is your business, and you’re awesome.

My wife and I been vegetarians for about 20 years and, like many of others, my diet has become *really* carbohydrate intensive. As time goes on, it becomes very easy to focus on bread, rice, and pasta instead of a healthier, more balanced diet.

The long term results of this diet, coupled with a high tech, sedentary life style are obesity and, with alarming frequency, diabetes.

I’ve been trying to find a convenient mindset that will allow me to rapidly decide what to eat. Moderation doesn’t work for me: things tend to spin back out of balance pretty quickly as soon as work gets busy. The easiest way for me to meet my nutritional goals is to pick an immersive lifestyle that maps closely to them.

I know that a lot of raw vegans feel that uncooked food is nutritionally superior to cooked ones, but for me, this is a simple, pragmatic choice. Going raw immediately eliminates all of the bread, pasta, chips, and other crap that typically constituted the bulk my diet and replaces them with a highly desirable but rarely seen combination of raw fruits, nuts, and vegetables.