First I am an internet crush. Then this: below is the final sentence from Ebert's review of House of Fools.
"The masterstroke is the use of Bryan Adams, who seems like a joke when he first appears ... but is used by Konchalovsky in such a way that eventually [h]e becomes the embodiment of the ability to imagine and dream ..."
I can't decide if I'm hurt, disappointed in myself, or just plain enraged. As before, potential replies are welcome.
From: "yamagishi reiko" (snip)
To: bpadams@ai.mit.edu
Subject: Bryan Adams?
Date: Mon, 19 May 2003 04:13:43 -0400
Many Bryan Adams' fans must have been found your web and go "Oh, no! he is not My Bryan!"
Reiko Yamagishi
I'm back, sunburned and exhausted, but smiling and enthused. A weekend jaunt does wonders for one's motivation level. I'll skip the lengthy recap of the weekend, except for one priceless story.
Saturday, Team Adams is teeing off of the 4th hole. Laura hooks her drive left of the fairway and near a cart path. Team CheatingJerks, playing right ahead of us, drives down same cart path, sees Laura's ball and thinks, "Hey! Free ball!" Father CJ stops the cart and gets out, clearly intending to pilfer an Adams family ball. This activity does not escape Mom's eagle eye. The following is her reaction:
"(Slightly raised voice) No no! That's our ball. (Louder) No, that's our ball, it's ... (Sees that the guy doesn't hear her and is picking it up anyway) HEY!"
... and when she said HEY, a transformation took place. With supernatural volume and tone, this utterance came not from dear old mum, but from the combined spirit of every crazy neighborhood woman who's ever yelled at the kids to keep their goddamn frisbee off her roof. My normally-sweet mother suddenly would have been right at home in a hairnet and a flowered apron while waving a broom threateningly. I don't need to tell you that the guy dropped the ball and scampered back to his cart, peeling out for the next hole. It was creepy. And hilarious.
Really, the entire weekend was similarly fantastic. Great to see my folks and my sister, great to see the ever-expanding empire that is Matt's family, and great to see my little group of friends. Combine all these elements with a steak and some gin and tonic under a tent off the first tee ... it was like a great big hug for the soul. I eagerly anticipate next year.
Now. I have a giant stack of email, swaying precariously, waiting to topple itself all over my newfound motivation. I deliver myself to battle.
This is gonna be the last post for a while, as I'm about to embark on a northerly excursion with Laura and the folks. A Hampton Inn, Ashley's, and 36 holes of golf in Vermont's finest little hamlet, Randolph. (I'm gonna see that linear algebra movie as well).
A few parting definitions:
Scramble [noun] 4 : In golf, a format of play in which a foursome records a single score. For each shot, all four players take turns swinging from the same spot. The "best shot" is the ball deemed most playable for the following shot (usually the ball closest to the hole), and other shots are discarded. The process is repeated, starting from the site of the "best shot." The group score is the sum of each of these scores. The lowest score results in victory.
Victory [noun] 1 : The overcoming of an enemy or antagonist
Enemy [noun] Plural, Enemies 1 : Matt, Dave, Jeb, Sonja
I'm busy as a bee trying to manufacture thesis-proposal-prose, but I have to take a minute to share a freaked-out feeling.
I heard a talk today (given by my officemate) entitled, "Where are all the women?" In short, she was asking why only 20% of MIT AI grad students a grand total of 2 professors (out of maybe 25) are women. It's a good question, and there is a whole catalog of good answers, including societal pressures, family considerations, and tenure track issues.
The one that caught my ear, though, was the idea that MIT is a "competitive, high-pressure" place, and that's bad for women. Now, my feminist theory is a little rusty, but I had a negative gut reaction to that reasoning. Isn't it patronizing to women to suggest that they can't thrive in competitive, high-pressure envionments?
And just as I was about to make that point with an air of self-righteousness, this other girl in the lab, a girl to whom I've never spoken directly, but for whom I have a tremendous amount of respect, pointed out to me that many studies have shown the following phenomenon: Women, in general, tend to blame failure on themselves and attribute success to their environments. Men tend to do just the opposite. Hence, a competitive, high-pressure place (which is going to produce lots of "failure" situations) will be worse for a typical woman than a typical man.
So now I'm all freaked out. Do we need to reduce the pressure to make MIT ok for women? Doesn't that sound like something a jerk male would suggest?
Update: If you'd like to see the slides from the talk, my officemate has graciously posted them here (.ppt format).
AI is an interesting field for a variety of reasons, none more so than the fact that the founder of the field appears to have gone insane.
Marvin Minsky more or less started AI as a field at a Dartmouth conference in 1955. Computers were just beginning to carry out complex calculations, and Minsky, McCarthy, and co. wanted to find out if they could do some of the things that people do. Minsky would go on to create the MIT AI Lab, which has been a research hub for many years.
Fast forward to 2003. Minsky has left the AI lab and now works out of the Media Lab, about which I will not coment here. He regularly takes potshots at the AI Lab like this, which include thinly veiled insults directed towards my advisor and the work we do.
And make no mistake, Marvin is a genuinely wretched old gasbag. I took his class a few years back, and after the first lecture, I went up to introduce myself as a member of Rod's group. I was sure that all the vitriol from magazines was just a media face. Wrong. He proceeded to YELL (yes, yell) that I was WASTING MY LIFE and that our research would NEVER AMOUNT TO ANYTHING. I had no choice but to stop attending lectures since my classmates, from that day forward, treated me like I had the clap.
What's interesting to me is this: right or wrong, Minsky is a bizarre story. Either he founded the field of AI and then denounced it when it corrupted itself or he founded the field and then went on a 20-year nutty about how wrong it is. I almost wish I was immortal just to see how it turns out.
PS: Hey Marvin, what exactly has that Common Sense crap or it's ugly uncle ever done for anyone?
If you see a large smoke cloud over Cambridge today, it's because the grad students have set the Institute on fire. We're mad as hell, and we're not going to take it anymore!
A Graduate Student Council representative went to a meeting with some administrative types and came away with bad news: health insurance is going up 70% this year, from ~$900 to ~$1500. She meant to email this to the GSC officers, but mistyped the address (by one letter, ironically) and instead sent it to most of the graduate students. The students then reacted with the same grace and sanity that Curly demonstrated after being poked in the eyes by Moe. Except the entire nyuck-nyuck-nyuck episode has been played out over roughly 50 emails.
They started out pretty sane: "Boy, this sucks!" Then they got philosophical, but overly accusatory: "The administration is trying to drive out low-income students!" Then we had our first mutant reply that required everyone to weigh in: "It's policies like this that allowed white men to build a nuclear bomb and drop it on non-white people!" Then we started getting my favorite, the emails asking for no more email: "It's rude to spam everyone on this list with your thoughts!" And my favorite favorite: "Ditto! (entire message chain quoted)".
One person made a comment, though, that clunked me right in the head. He opined that grad students should be going into debt. Most post-college options require tremendous debt, and why should MIT be any different? This is something that, deep down, I've felt for a long time. Let me be honest: my contribution to the world of science is not so great that it should be funded by others. My work does far more for me than it does for any other person. I should be paying for this segment of my life, and instead, I'm being paid. I'm a fraud.
But, then again, if someone's willing to give me the money, perhaps I should just take it and be grateful. I don't know. Are you worth the money you're paid? Or does the fact that it's paid to you mean that you're worth it?
"There will come a day when you'll beat me. Maybe that day will be today."
Matt, May 11, 2003
Matt and I have a long history of golfing together, dating back to my days as an embarrassing hack. He waited patiently while I filled the woods at Leo J. Martin Memorial Golf Course with sliced drives. He politely stared at his shoes while I cursed my inability to chip a ball 15ft instead of 40ft. He shook his head in sympathetic consternation at my inability to sink a two-foot putt.
And yet, in time, the student must overtake the master. Yesterday was finally that day. Matt, to his immense credit, put up one metric hell of a fight. Not only is he a fantastic golfer, but he's a Jedi knight of golfing head games. The casual banter that usually accompanies our outings is replaced by carefully measured utterances. Conversations are less an exchange of ideas and more a mental skirmish for the critical battleground of the mind. And Matt's got every shot in the brain-games-bag. Like
"Boy, if you hadn't missed that short putt, you'd only be one stroke back now."
"Man, I really gave you two strokes on that hole. What's the score now?"
"Can I give you a golf tip? Try rotating your grip 5 degrees on the club."
I fell for all of them, one at a time. Chunked long-iron shots from trying too hard. Wayward approach shots from trying a "new grip." And the king of all mental break downs, the comically misunderestimated putt. I freely admit: I am a weak mental athlete. I am the Scott Norwood of golf. I choke like a senior citizen eating a tough steak.
But yesterday, I couldn't be stopped. The golf gods smiled on me, and nothing could prevent my ascension. Matt, after hole 5, tried for the 300-yard-drive-over-the-water of mental games: the lost scorecard. "Guess it must have fallen out of my pocket while I was rummaging for my ball." Without going into the complicated physics necessary for a scorecard to "fall out of" a back pocket, I can honestly say that I was unfazed. I stayed the course, picked my shots, and emerged from hole nine, victorious, 47 - 49.
And even though I blew that lead over the back nine to the tune of a 97 - 95 final score, this is a special day. Because the truth is that the early days of golf with a beginner are painful. Looking for balls in the deep woods, taking the par-fives one agonizing 30-foot-shot at a time, waiting to putt while the rookie rolls it around the green like a special olympics golfer: these are not recreative activities. And still, every week, Matt would email, asking if I wanted to join as a fourth.
So I say to Matt: thanks for all the rounds over the last three years. And maybe you wouldn't fade so much on your irons if you adjusted your stance.
I am officially an internet crush.
Now I just need to meet Roger Ebert, write a best-selling novel, and shoot a sub-72 round of golf. But, hey, I'm 25% done!
True story:
We had our little Friday group meeting this afternoon. These meetings are mandatory for every group member for two reasons: 1.) "So that we can all be in the same room for an hour once a week" (actual, complete quote from lab advisor) and 2.) So that everyone doesn't just skip work every Friday.
Objective two was an utter success today, although everyone leaves the lab after the meetings like you'd leave a small room after someone farted. Objective one was also accomplished, much to my chagrin. Putting me in the same room with some of these geeks tends to create some interesting culture clashes. Today's exchange was classic:
Context: discussion about safety devices for rolling robot. Much has been made of "What happens if the robot falls over?" One student has designed a mockup of a kickstand leg that would be activated by a motor.
Me: Maybe we should consider something mechanical, in case the power system also fails. For example, there's this kickstand system on my golf bag ...
Thesis Advisor: (Cuts in) You have a golf bag?
Me: Yeah. To carry my golf clubs in.
TA: Who owns their own golf bag? My (derisively) father-in-law owns a golf bag.
Me: (Glares) He sounds like a nice guy.
89 Glass For being unable to tell the difference between a back windshield and a front windshield. When you're training someone to take orders for windshield repair, shouldn't this be lesson 1?
GIMP For crashing my computer 3 goddamn times in the process of creating a posterized version of my face. Free Software Foundation: You Get What You Pay For.
The Cleveland Indians For being unable to win half their games and costing me $5 to my dad in a bet. Personal note to John McDonald: Your "personal video diary" would be more exciting if we didn't think that your July entries will be coming from Buffalo.
That's all I have so far. But it's only 1pm.
The whole phenomenon of movie cliches simply astounds me. Why do the same thing a million other movies have done? If I were writing a screenplay, I would do the opposite of whatever other movies have done. Like
Villian: Join me! Together, we can rule the world!
Superhero: Ok.
S. and V. proceed to terrorize the city for profit. Non-super policemen battle with super pair for control of the city.
Or
Boy: Do you always wear those glasses?
Shy, Mousy Girl: (dramatically takes off glasses and lets down hair) No...
Girl still looks mousy, only now has beady eyes and stringy hair. Boy must now decide if unpopular girl who he began dating on a bet but now secretly likes is still a worthy prom date.
Or how about
Grizzled Hero: Ok ... now, red wire or blue wire?
Bomb: (Explodes)
The terrorists must now be foiled by Quirky Partner, Beautiful Love Interest, Cranky Police Captian, and Token Ethnic Throwin.
I mean, you know? Can I get a whoop whoop?
I can't believe I did it. I stayed up all night for absolutely no reason. Well -- no good reason, anyway.
I crawled into bed at 1:30am. Tried to close my eyes, but then found that I was squinting. Tried to relax my eyes. Wondered about the thickness of my eyelids. How come I can sort of see through them sometimes? You know, you can tell if it's light or dark even if your eyes are closed? Is all my skin that translucent? Do similar levels of light seep in through the rest of my skin? Should I be concerned about light shining on my blood? Or on my bones? And what about the other crap that's floating around in there? Does the fact that light shines regularly on, say, my forearm muscles mean that those muscles are different from the muscles in more-poorly-lit parts of my body, like my ass? Could that be related to that "where the sun don't shine" expression?
After about an hour of this, I realized that I either had to get up or hit myself in the head with something hard. So I got up. Wrote some emails. Vacuumed. Finally fixed that wiring thing between the DVD player and the TV. And before you know it, poof, 9am.
And, strangely, I feel fine. Except that I'm a little worried about getting enough sunlight on my ass.
I heard a talk yesterday by The MIT Dean of Admission about the "generational shift" that's taking place in universities across the country. It appears that Generation X is finally graduating and that the Millenials are off to college.
If the median Gen X'er was Kurt Cobain, then the median Millenial is Britney. Where Xers are angsty, resentful, and contemplative, M's are cheery, cooperative, and engaged. We hate our parents, they love theirs. We took violin lessons, they volunteered. I could go on and on like this -- the black art of generation taxonomy is to apply broad generalizations in a very careful way. And if that, on its face, sounds like a giant steaming pile of bullshit, well then you can sit your angsty, resentful ass in the Gen X corner and think about what you've said.
On the one hand, this is fun: you play the "which generation am I in?" game, you "analyze" how the different generations interact with each other, you look at how events or phenomena influenced or are described by the qualities you've assigned to the various groups. On the other hand, it's complete garbage: every word of it is a "just-so story" that describes a series of loose data points, but isn't a predictive theory (I think the funding request to form alternate generations of humans in a parallel universe would be a little high).
Either way, the little games are fun. I'm guilty of getting along with my parents, volunteering, and being generally amicable to authority (except for the jerk-ass cop who tried to tell me I couldn't cross Vassar St. today). So, despite my use of first person pronouns above, I guess I'm more Britney than Kurt. I better do some situps right now.
My officemate is getting filthy. He will defend his PhD thesis one week from today, and his bathing and clothes-changing routines aren't getting the job done. Luckily, I'm horribly congested, so I rarely catch the foul stench of academic demands run amok.
Two funny things about him. First: how do you work on something for almost 9 years and still have to stay up all night for the last few nights to finish? There must be some conservation of procrastination law at work here.
Second: we both went to see the defense of a mutual co-worker today, and he became despondent after seeing it. "My work doesn't have as much stuff in it as P.'s work does." Again, he's about to present 9 years of work. The thesis document is already over 120 pages. I'll admit that it's not as flashy to the layperson, but it's an extremely solid thesis. Not enough stuff?
Just goes to show you that you never can keep up with the Joneses. The ability to be satisfied with yourself and your achievements is like spiders. You don't want too much, or really even a moderate amount, but you need just enough to keep the flies at bay.
No casino this weekend, although perhaps I should have. Because it turned out that May 3, 2003, was the Perfect Saturday.
o 10a to 1p: Alumni Board Meeting with lots of the old frat guys. In this case, "meeting" means trading fart jokes and insults.
o 1p to 2:30p: Lunch at Boston Beer Works. We walk up and see a huge line. "We'll have to wait forever," I lament. "Nope," says the strange bouncer guy, "You can come in right now and sit down." And so we do.
o 2:30p to 4p: Lunch is wrapping up when two pretty young ladies walk up. "Want some free tickets to the Red Sox game?" one asks. We all look at her suspiciously. Really? Really. Watched innings 4-9 of Pedro's 12-strikeout complete-game performance.
o 4p to 4:30: Nap.
o 4:30-8p: 9 holes of golf at Leo J Martin, the local craphole golf course. I shoot reasonably, given it's only my second nine holes of the spring. Most importantly, I beat my cartmate, Adam.
o 8p to 9:30p: Dinner at the Middle East. Slightly sub-optimal, but still, somehow, perfect.
B (looks at menu with consternation): "I'll have the beef cous-cous."
(intermission)
B: "What's this gritty stuff?"
M: "That's cous-cous."
o 9:30p to 12a: Small party at friend-of-a-friend's. The highlight comes when the host breaks out a small bottle of absinth (yes, absinth). Did a shot, did not go crazy.
o 12a to 1a: Trip to "The Last Drop," the worst bar within walking distance of home (this was Matt's idea). Shouted myself hoarse with three "charming" young ladies from the North Shore about 1.) how much I would get my ass kicked in the North Shore, 2.) sharks, and 3.) how much I suck for growing up in Ohio. Didn't even exchange names.
o 1a to 2a: Flaunted perfection of the day by soundly beating Matt and Adam at Golden Tee 2004.
o 2a: Retired to bed.
See? Perfect.
"Mr. Santorum, they said, wanted to talk about legal terms, insisting that he was just arguing against a right to privacy and that his remarks had been taken out of context."
"A spokeswoman for Mr. Santorum, Erica Clayton Wright, described the meeting as "a very professional and polite exchange." She declined to give details, however, saying, "Constituent meetings are private."
As an opinionated and sanctimonius guy, I'm always troubled when I don't have an angry, Khrushchev-shoe-pounding argument about a controversial topic. Abortion, poverty, intellectual property -- I've got rants for all these that I keep in my pocket and fling at my friends when I start to feel like they're enjoying my company a little too much.
But I don't have one about gambling. And I need one soon, because the college guys are in town this weekend and are already encouraging me to go with them to one of the giant Indian Casinos in southern New England.
Here's how I break it down:
Pro:
It's been around since the Bible
It's legal in CT, and it might soon be legal in MA
For better or worse, it does provide much-needed tax revenue
Outlawing it is as foolish as prohibition
Your going or not going isn't going to make one lick of difference
You're the one with a car
What are you, a pansy?
Con:
Slavery has also been around since the Bible
Lots of legal things still suck
The majority of the money it collects comes from addicts who can't afford it
I don't want to outlaw it, I just don't want to support it
It makes a difference to me
Adam or Dave can drive
Why don't you kiss my ass, you jerk
So the issues are complex and subtle. I also have to factor in the fact that 1.) I'm likely to lose money and 2.) I'm likely to miss that lost money very much. Although 1.) Maybe I'll win and 2.) Aren't I supposed to try to be nicer to my currency anyway?
The opening line is 7-5 against me going, but we'll see what kind of action those odds get.
There's something in the rain today. Everyone around the lab is eyeing everyone else with a "just give me an excuse" look in their beady little eyes. And it's not just in Cambridge. Other Bostonites have remarked on how this rain is sucking out everyone's life. It made me go and write a depressing post about how much life sucks when, really, it doesn't.
Still. I'm going home just to be on the safe side.
I have a former friend who's having a party tonight to celebrate her graduation from Harvard Law School. Someone inadvertently forwarded me an invitation, although I'm pretty sure I'm not actually invited. I remember the fall when she started -- she called me once, breathless at the excitement of her new classes and classmates. She could hardly contain her enthusiasm: "Harvard just goes out and gets the best people in the world." That quote's scrawled on the back wall of my mind, and no matter how many times I try to wash it off with U.S. News and World Report rankings of graduate schools, it seems to stick.
I'm taken back to one of those turning points in life. Mine came during the LSATs. I had prepared by taking enough practice tests to wallpaper a room. I had read all the theories about how to score well. I got a good night's sleep the night before. Big hearty breakfast. And when I went into the test, I choked. Big time.
In fact, I remember the choke very specifically. I was working on a reading comprehension section when I looked at my little bought-for-the-LSAT stopwatch (modified to prevent beeping, according to the LSAT rules). The time left was a little less than I anticipated, and I thought, "Oh man, I have to hurry." "Hurry, but don't rush -- you need to score well on this section because everyone thinks people from MIT can't read." "No no no, they're just going to look at your composite score, not the specific sections ... right?" "Hey! Your eyes are still reading, but you're not comprehending. This section is reading comprehension. You're not comprehending! COMMENCE COMPREHENSION!" "I'm trying, but I can't remember if Harvard said they look at individual section scores or just the composite! Aaaah! I have to stop thinking about that. Now! NOW!" "Jesus Christ ... mayday, mayday ..."
Really. I remember thinking, right in the middle of the reading comprehension section, "Mayday, mayday." I was choking, I knew I was choking, I was almost watching myself choke, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I tried to "reset" my mind ("Can we reset? Like a video game?" "Stop it! Concentrate!") with no luck. As I hurriedly answered the questions from the final passage, I second-guessed every answer. As I was filling in a bubble, I could almost see the scan-tron machine putting a little ink dash next to that number to indicate a wrong answer. If I squinted hard enough, I could almost see dashes pre-printed on my form for that entire section. And when I called the hotline to get my score a few days later, I knew exactly what had happened. I choked.
Of course, this story still ended ok. All my lab co-workers wanted me to stay, and so I just sort of stayed. Like a collie.
But trudging across the Harvard Bridge today for what must be close to the 4500th time, I floated back to that test and thought. What if I hadn't choked? What if I'd scored well gotten into Harvard? I could be having my own party tonight to celebrate my graduation. I could be earnestly thanking everyone who supported me. I could be eagerly anticipating a clerkship with a judge on the 7th circuit.
But I'm not. I'm fiddling around with robot arms. Which is fine. And I have all kinds of great friends and experiences, and it's all worked out just fine. But on rainy Thursday mornings, I sometimes wonder what might have been if I just hadn't looked at my stupid stopwatch in the middle of that section.