Few people with an interest in space travel have the resources to make that dream a reality. In a few minutes, Charles Simonyi will be one of those people. He’s among the few space tourists who’ve paid the $20-$25 million for the experience. He has been chronicling his adventures at charlesinspace.com, an interesting and informative Web site where users can get answers about the various aspects of his preparation and travel. (You can watch the launch live here or click on the link above to choose your preferred player.)
I had the opportunity to meet Charles Simonyi last October when I was in the Seattle area giving a talk at Microsoft Research. I consider my experience a classic case of cultural capital at work. Both of us having grown up in Budapest – and it turns out just a few blocks from each other, although a few decades apart – likely was not enough of a reason for him to bother responding to my email. Rather, I suspect it was our shared interest in the Hungarian artist Victor Vasarely that prompted him to invite me for a tour of his house. It was super fun, Charles Simonyi has some wonderful works by Vasarely and others, and I very much enjoyed the opportunity to see his collection.
We also took a brief tour of his library in which he has some interesting original documents related to space travel. His passion for the topic is obvious and contagious. I look forward to the updates on his site about this amazing adventure.
In the above picture, I stand next to Charles Simonyi (he’s holding my father’s book The Martians of Science) with a Vasarely sculpture behind us. Photo credit goes to Marc Smith who kindly invited and hosted me on this visit to MSR.
Over at TPM, much bemused shaking of heads at Monica Goodling’s Friday resignation, and possible Easter symbolism accruing thereto. From her letter to Gonzales: “May God bless you richly as you continue your service to America.”
And suddenly it hits me. In 2008 the seemingly moribund Republican party needs to look, for inspiration, to Corinthians, chapter 15, for spiritual mediation of the apparent contradiction between Christianist principle and cronyist practice. The GOP: “It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption.” (Of course, reading on from 42 to 50 complicates interpretation. Still … )
UPDATE: Oh, I just can’t resist (click for larger version)
Terry Gross interviewed Jake Kasdan on Fresh Air yesterday. Most of it was enabling him to plug a soon-to-be-out movie, and talking about his currently-in-progress movie, both of which sound very good. But much more interesting was the discussion of Freaks and Geeks, on which he was a director and co-producer. Interestingly, though, he misinterprets one of the central events.
Before proceeding with the spoiler, I should explain why, if you haven’t seen Freaks and Geeks, you should not read on until you’ve watched it (easy to do because its now on DVD, all 18 episodes, not just the 12 that were aired). Freaks and Geeks was the best thing on American TV in the past 20 years or so, and that means that it is better than, e.g., the Sopranos). If you have ever gone to school, at least in an English-speaking country after about 1960, you’ll recognise some aspect of your experience; and almost everything is believable. I knew two of the central characters when I was at school (in southern England); Lindsey is even dressed the same as one of my friends. You knew one or two of them too. Brilliantly written, perfectly cast, it’s what TV ought to be.
I never really think of myself as operating under the protection of academic freedom, even though I believe that it is an important value. This is probably because by the time I became a teacher with genuine autonomy I’d already heard the idea invoked so many times in defense of so many bad practices that I couldn’t take it seriously. Anything I do in the classroom or in my research has to be justified on its merits; I think of academic freedom as the instrument which protects those activities of mine that are independently justified from interference from others who have no business interfering. Academic freedom is valuable for that purpose, and it makes sense for everyone, even those who are offended by some of what I and other scholars do, to want to protect our freedom to do that, even though some bad and malicious things will be done as a result of the freedom that grants us. But it is not possible to specify the parameters of academic freedom independently of what society has a reason to expect of scholars.
Here are some examples of practices that some claim to merit the protection of academic freedom:
When my husband turned 40, his sister and I joined forces in giving him a present that we knew he would really like: a photography-trip to a city of choice, with childcare included. Read: his sister would take care of our son at home, and I would buy him a ticket for two to a city where he would like to take pictures, and he could spend all day making pictures without me moaning that I want to move on. He chose New York City (which implied that since I think it is crazy to fly across the Atlantic for 3 days, the citytrip turned into a one-week holiday).
We are not quite new to NYC, since we lived there for six months in 2004… nevertheless, given that we worked too much then, I am sure there is still loads for us to see. What do you think we should not miss? And what are the hidden gems of NYC that we are unlikely to find in a travel guide, or the places of special interest for photographers? With doubled thanks!
As of yesterday, Indonesia has suffered more confirmed human deaths (72) from the avian flu than any other country. (Here are World Health Organization statistics.) In February, Indonesia stopped sending samples of the flu to the WHO. They wanted to prevent drug companies from developing and patenting vaccines that they (and other poor countries) could not afford. In a February story (that I missed at the time), the NY Timesreported:
Dr. David L. Heymann, chief of communicable diseases at the [WHO], who negotiated in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, with the health minister, thanked Indonesia for drawing attention to the problem and said he had been assured that it “would not hold the W.H.O. hostage to the virus,” wire service reports from Indonesia said.
…
Dr. Heymann said that a fund to buy vaccine for poor countries could be discussed at the March meeting and that his agency would help Indonesia eventually develop its own vaccine factories.
At the end of March, Indonesia and the WHO reached an agreement according to which Indonesia would resume sharing samples with the WHO, on the condition that “not share virus samples with commercial vaccine makers without permission from the source country”.
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Britain’s largest drugs company, is in talks with the World Health Organisation (WHO) about a proposal for a subsidised mass vaccination programme against avian flu for developing countries, The Times has learnt.
Hopefully these negotiations will be fruitful. It seems as though Indonesia has played the game successfully – but what a dangerous game they were forced to play.
Who says there are no benefits to blogging? If it wasn’t for CT then I would never have met Matt Gordon and would never have been invited to his wonderful Seder last night. Thanks, Matt!
We talked about lots of things, among them how most Haggadahs lack enough information for a newcomer to really get the Passover story while making the central role of He Who Has No Name unmistakable (even while the rest of the story might remain a bit blurry and I don’t just mean because of the amount of wine consumed).
But we also talked about other things, for example: how one comes to name machines in one’s lab. Perhaps not surprising given my previous post, the machines in my lab have Star Wars references. This idea dates back to the machines in the offices of one of my college mentors: Joe had a big black Next machine that was called Darth and the little white Mac I used was called Yoda. So when I started populating my lab with machines I named the white one Yoda and the two black ones Darth and Vader. [click to continue…]
Commemorating the 30th Anniversary of Star Wars, the USPS is coming out with Star Wars stamps in May. Woohoo! Limited edition express mail envelopes will also be available and this fact has me contemplating what I should send to myself in express mail. Yes, it’s a great marketing ploy, I am sold.
The site is collecting votes for the stamp that will “reign above all others”.
And now, for only the second time in its 256-year-history, the U.S. Postal Service invites you to vote for your favorite stamp. The winning stamp will become its own stamp sheet.
Cast your vote today. C-3PO seems to be ahead, which is not a horrible choice, but personally I’d rather see either Yoda or Darth Vader win.
More on my dedication to Star Wars in another post.
Thanks to Scott Feldstein for the above photo. Apparently there’s such a mailbox in Palo Alto as well, I’ll have to look for it.
Over at his “other digs”:http://www.artsjournal.com/quickstudy/2007/04/depth_takes_a_holiday.html#more, Scott responds to Ann Althouse’s YouTube video of herself watching American Idol, by Youtubing a video of himself watching Ann Althouse watching American Idol. Ladies and gentlemen; place your bets on how close we can get to infinite regress before it’s all over …
Update: “Tim Lambert and his dog respond”:http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/04/i_join_the_vlogging_craze.php.
The cover story to this week’s issue of The Nation is an article by Christopher Phelps on the new Students for a Democratic Society. I read it in a couple of earlier drafts, and can’t imagine anything more fair to the young people who are being radicalized by the war. As Phelps says, it’s not that they tend to know a lot about the old SDS and want to relive it. They aren’t antiquarians. But “democratic society” just sounds like a good a name for what they want — and they know better than to think they are living in one now. [click to continue…]
Spotted at the “Economist’s Free Exchange blog”:http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2007/03/airlines_and_inequality.cfm :
bq. According to the new tax data, the income gap has widened. This has led to more speculation that we will descend into a Dickensian dystopia full of the have and have nots. I recently experienced this type of reality when I had the opportunity to fly business class on a trans-Atlantic flight.
Possibly this is an attempt at irony by La Galt; possibly the gap between first-class and regular transatlantic passengers really does make her think of _Bleak House_ or _Oliver Twist_ . Either way, there’s a kind of disconnect here that I have trouble getting my head around.
After a moderately funny NPR April Fool’s piece on banning ringtones in New York, this sponsor announcement made me laugh out loud.
On the news headlines that followed, the lead item was that the U.S. was scrambling to complete a huge free trade deal (“the biggest since NAFTA”) with North Korea.
Few people with an interest in space travel have the resources to make that dream a reality. In a few minutes, Charles Simonyi will be one of those people. He’s among the few space tourists who’ve paid the $20-$25 million for the experience. He has been chronicling his adventures at charlesinspace.com, an interesting and informative Web site where users can get answers about the various aspects of his preparation and travel. (You can watch the launch live here or click on the link above to choose your preferred player.)
). Freaks and Geeks was the best thing on American TV in the past 20 years or so, and that means that it is better than, e.g., the Sopranos). If you have ever gone to school, at least in an English-speaking country after about 1960, you’ll recognise some aspect of your experience; and almost everything is believable. I knew two of the central characters when I was at school (in southern England); Lindsey is even dressed the same as one of my friends. You knew one or two of them too. Brilliantly written, perfectly cast, it’s what TV ought to be.