Live forever or die trying
http://www.duke.edu/web/duu/majorspeakers/majorspeakersevents.htm
Major Speakers presents Ben Stein for Parents Weekend on October 25th at 3 P.M. in Page Auditorium. Admission is free and tickets will be available the week before his appearance.
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/tt/2003/oct08/demaine.html
PHOTO / DONNA COVENEY
Erik Demaine solved the “carpenter’s rule problem.”
MORE INFORMATION:
Father and son share love of art, computer science – MIT Tech Talk, Oct. 8, 2003
A 22-year-old MIT professor whose work fuses art, science, work and play is the recipient of a $500,000 MacArthur Fellowship, commonly known as the “genius” grant.
Assistant Professor Erik Demaine of electrical engineering and computer science—who last month was called one of the most brilliant scientists in America by Popular Science magazine—is one of the youngest people ever selected for the fellowship and the youngest of the 24 named this year.
Demaine is interested in abstract geometry problems related to folding and bending that have practical applications in fields as diverse as manufacturing (sheet metal fabrication) and biology (protein folding).
At age 17, he unfolded the secret behind a complicated geometry problem. Demaine and his collaborators proved mathematically that it is possible to create any conceivable straight-sided shape by folding a piece of paper and making a single scissor cut. This launched the field of computational origami, an interdisciplinary endeavor on the boundary of computer science and mathematics.
For his doctoral thesis, Demaine solved the “carpenter’s rule problem,” a mathematical dilemma first posed around 25 years before. If you take a set of rigid bars connected by hinges lying flat on a table, is it always possible to fold the chain from one configuration into any other configuration without any of the bars crossing one another? The answer, Demaine proved, is yes.
“Winning the MacArthur grant is great, because a lot of the things I do are very theoretical and not so easy for regular grant organizations to fund,” said Demaine. “It’s definitely a helpful sum of money.”
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation awards the grants “to enable recipients to exercise their own creative instincts for the benefit of society at large,” It requires nothing in return during the five-year grant period—no reports, products or follow-up of any kind.
“We’ve been thinking of using the grant for a large-scale art project, possibly to cast a big metal version of [an origami] paper form,” said Demaine, who frequently collaborates with his father, Martin Demaine, a visiting scientist at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab and an artist in the MIT Glass Lab.
Demaine was home-schooled by his father from age 7 to 12, when he entered Dalhousie University in his hometown of Halifax, Nova Scotia. He earned his bachelor’s degree two years later in 1995, then went to the University of Waterloo for his master’s degree in math (1996) and the Ph.D. (2001). He joined the MIT faculty that same year, at age 20. At the same time, his father was hired as a visiting scientist.
“His background is in visual arts, so he’s been my art influence,” said Demaine. “Then I got him interested in algorithms and computer science. Lately we’ve been trying to combine these two.”
Another large art project Demaine is considering is that of a “shadow wall,” something he and his father have talked about for years. The idea is that a brick wall could be built with a few bricks strategically turned to cast a recognizable shadow picture when the sun shines at a particular angle. Such shadow pictures would require complex mathematical models, particularly if the pictures were to change throughout the day, said Demaine. For instance, early in the morning the shadow might make a picture of a young boy, transforming by the end of the day into an old man.
“We don’t know if this is even possible,” said Demaine. “It’s a big geometric problem. But if we could do it, it would be awesome.”
The phone call that could make the project possible came on a Monday morning. “I assumed it was someone trying to sell us something,” said Demaine. “So I let my dad answer it.” Demaine said it took a few minutes after the phone call to absorb the news. “I’d heard vaguely of the MacArthur grant before, but it took me some time to place it,” he said.
When asked how he celebrated, Demaine paused for a moment. “I don’t think we did; we’ve just been so busy. But I guess we should.”
rocks:
(Via )
I detest PDF files. They require a plugin to read, they're slow to load, they often break, and they generally display information that could've been as easily displayed in html and gifs/jpgs.
When I'm mad with wealth, I'm going to make me one of these:
made the following lovely observation:
Here's a fun game. Every time a Drug Warrior uses the phrase “drug addict” replace with their favorite hero, Rush Limbaugh, and see if they'd still agree with the statement. Here's one from the Republican Drug Warrior Vermont Governor James Douglas, from his budget message speech on January 23, 2003:
As he said it:
“More than anything, these drugs threaten our way of life. All the values that make Vermonters great -our independence, thrift, work ethic and community spirit are endangered when drugs command our bodies. Addicts are not independent; they are dependent; they are not prudent in their finances, only concerned with funding their destructive habits; they are not industrious, but unproductive. When drugs come into our neighborhoods, violence follows and thugs and criminals dominate our streets. This is not the Vermont way.”
Translated:
“More than anything, these drugs threaten our way of life. All the values that make Vermonters great -our independence, thrift, work ethic and community spirit are endangered when drugs command our bodies. Rush Limbaugh is not independent; Rush is dependent; Rush is not prudent in his finances, only concerned with funding his destructive habits; Rush is not industrious, Rush is unproductive. When drugs come into our neighborhoods, violence follows and thugs and criminals like Rush Limbaugh dominate our streets. This is not the Vermont way.”
Outfit your van for adventure.
http://www.movemobiles.com/about.html
http://www.infinitemonkeys.blogspot.com/2003_08_01_infinitemonkeys_archive.html#106024493822374291
“When I was in college, I was a bit of a library nerd. I used to go to UCSD’s Central Library and browse the stacks, especially the economics section. I remember picking up a small, poorly bound book that was a collection of papers presented at a very academic, very technical symposium held in the early 1980's on the Austrian school of economics. That's not actually a school, but a group of thinkers who ushered in a new free market view of economics. On the first page was a small list of attendees at the conference, and there was Arnold Schwarzenegger's name.
This actually wasn't that surprising, and not just because Arnold's Austrian. He has an undergraduate degree in business and international economics, and was very rich before he ever became an actor (he invested the money he made in body building very shrewdly).
I may still have a lot of questions about Arnold, and I'm not sure if I'll vote for him. But I strongly disagree with those (such as Charles at Little Green Footballs) who claim that no one knows what he stands for.
In fact, I'll let Arnold respond to that, in a way, with this quote from Laissez Faire Book's web page selling Milton and Rose Friedman's “Free to Choose” videos:
Milton and Rose Friedman's Free to Choose TV series has changed my life.
I came from Austria, a socialistic country where government controlled the economy. A place where you can hear 18-year-old kids talking about their pensions. I wanted more. I wanted to be the best. I had to come to America. I had no money in my pocket, but here I had the freedom to get it. I have been able to parlay my muscles into a big movie career.
Okay, so there I was, waiting for Maria to get ready for a game of mixed doubles tennis. I started flipping the television dial. I caught a glimpse of Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman whom I recognized from my studies in economics. I didn't know I was watching Free to Choose. It knocked me out. Dr. Friedman validated everything I ever thought about the way the economy works.
I became a big pain in the neck about Free to Choose. All my friends and acquaintances got tapes as well as books for Christmas after Christmas. If I had come up with Free to Choose, maybe I wouldn't have got into body building. –Arnold Schwarzenegger
(And, yes, that's Maria Shriver, whom he met in 1977 at a tennis tournament. And no, I don't really get that last sentence.)”
Forget Burning Man, I'm going to rumspringa.
“There is little difference between a man who eats too little and sees God, and a man who drinks too much and sees snakes.” — Bertrand Russell