Relevant History

Quote of the day

From a 1986 Life magazine article by Anne Fadiman about Benazir Bhutto:

Cambridge, Mass., 1970. My next-door neighbor in Eliot Hall is named Pinkie Bhutto. She is the daughter of the former Pakistan foreign minister, which impresses no one, since Robert Kennedy's daughter Kathleen lives directly beneath her in a room covered with photographs of her dead father and uncle. Pinkie can't hold a candle to that.

Given recent events, what sounds like a very insider paragraph has a more tragic echo.

Towel bars are up!

Mon 12/31/2007 16:36 12312007557

Just in time for brunch tomorrow!

World's End

Last night I watched Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. The kids saw it at Safeway the other day, and having just been allowed to watch the first movie, wanted to make sure we had the complete set.

I really liked the first movie, and thought the second was perfectly entertaining, but this one suffered from the same problem that plagued Spider-Man 3 and Matrix Revolutions: namely, the writers seemed to hope that putting in five plots, gigantic special effects, and endless action would hide the absence of a single good idea and clear story. And the final disposition of the main characters, especially Will Turner, is a total let-down.

You know it's a bad sign when you're watching a movie that features a guy with an octopus face, for goodness sake, and you react to some new plot twist with the thought, "Now that's implausible."

[To the tune of Bombay Dub Orchestra, "The Berber of Seville (The Berber of Suburbia Mix)," from the album "Bombay Dub Orchestra".]

Almost done!

Sun 12/30/2007 13:46 12302007555

The bathroom is almost finished. Seal the grout, put up towel bars and medicine chest, and voila!

Exploratorium

Today we took the kids to the San Francisco Exploratorium. They had cleverly arranged very long lines at the ticket counter, so we bought a membership to avoid having to stand for a long time. (That'll show them!)

via flickr

[To the tune of U2, "The Ground Beneath My Feet," from the album "All That You Can't Leave Behind".]

Technorati Tags: Exploratorium, family, museum, San Francisco, science

More brains!

At the San Francisco Exploratorium.

Stephen Wolfram on entrepreneurship, uncertainty, and postacademic lives

I came upon the Waggle Labs blog today*, and saw a quote by Stephen Wolfram that struck me as touching on postacademic life, and one of the challenges of making the transition from an academic career to another career:

A lot of what goes into starting companies is turning nothing into something. Starting with a blank slate, and just inventing all kinds of stuff.

You’ll never know if it’s ultimately correct. You just have to use your judgement, make decisions, and move on.

To some people, that’s pretty scary. Not to have any answers to look up in the back of the book.

As a brilliant mathematician, entrepreneur, and author, Wolfram is someone well worth listening to on this subject. Having now spent more of my professional life outside of academia than inside-- or rather, since I've still got an academic affiliation, more of my of my life being paid by corporations or nonprofits than educational institutions-- it strikes me that one of the defining characteristics of academic careers is the amazing, and in many ways reassuring, clarity of their career structures.

[To the tune of Ike & Tina Turner, "River Deep, Mountain High," from the album "Soul Sisters".]

Technorati Tags: academia, postacademic

How I feel with the end of the holidays

Tags: self-portrait, christmas, palo alto

Goodbye chocolate sleigh!

Wed 12/26/2007 18:39 12262007549

A friend in Germany sent this-- a chocolate sleigh with two little passengers.

The kids report that their beards were made from mint-flavored white chocolate.

I'm definitely going on a serious diet in 2008.

Flat Christmas

Tue 12/25/2007 10:53 12252007453

Lots of flat gifts this year!